


you were my yesterday (i’ll be your future)

by jeonhwa



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-09 02:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12267252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeonhwa/pseuds/jeonhwa
Summary: Junhui drags himself out of bed, rolling over and flopping onto the ground and letting the blanket tangle around his feet. There’s a small mirror on the table next to the closet, so he crawls over and peers into it. All things considered, he could be uglier. He examines his face. It’s not a bad one to have a dream in, to be honest. His eyes are large and wide, and his ears are vaguely pointed at the ends. It’s kind of cute, like an elf’s ears or something. He feels like a character in a fantasy role playing game.Junhui turns his head this way and that, inspecting his face. He has earrings here, two in his right lobe and two in his left lobe and one in the cartilage in his left ear. His hair is dyed a light brown, something that Junhui couldn’t ever imagine himself doing since his school is so strict about the hair colors the students are allowed to have— apparently, Junhui’s a lot cooler in his dream than he is in real life.(junhui just wants to go home to shenzhen, but he ends up having the strangest and most realistic dream of his life when he wakes up as a skinny dancer kid from anshan. akimi no na wa& my i au.)





	1. your beginning

**Author's Note:**

> an au inspired by kimi no na wa and my i ♡ 
> 
>    
> prior knowledge of kimi no na wa isn't required or necessary to read this.  
> ty as always to yun for holding my hand through all of this, and for drawing [the most beautiful my i inspired art](https://twitter.com/yunchanpai/status/904824706599092224) i love u 4evr ♡

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> junhui wants to feel like he belongs.

“As we all know, every living organism needs certain things to live. Can anyone name one of them? Jungmin, you raised your hand? Yes, water is one of them. Can anyone name another?”

Junhui stares blankly at the chalkboard in front of him, tapping his pencil absently against the desk as the teacher lectures on and on.

He knows in his mind that the teacher’s talking about the need for shelter or the need for food or something like that, and the teacher is writing down bulleted facts on the side of the board. He knows that this is material that’ll be covered in the exams at the end of this course, and possible in the college entrance examinations, but honestly, Junhui can’t seem to bring himself to care about learning today.

It’s been exactly six years since Junhui came to Korea with nothing to remind him of home except for a tattered and worn cat plush, one that he’s kept on the shelf next to his bed as a reminder of his roots. He’d known no Korean at all at the time, and he’d had to slowly work himself back up from the bottom, learning a completely new alphabet, learning completely new words, leaning how to speak again.

He doesn’t have any of those problems anymore. Even his parents were impressed at how quickly he seemed to pick up a completely new language, and Junhui can admit to himself, when the night is dark and the only light comes from the moon and the stars outside, that as self-absorbed it might sound, he’s done well. He’s done more than well here, flourishing where everyone might’ve expected him to crash and burn on the first day, and he has no one to thank for it except himself.

He’d been the one to make the trek down to the public library and choose books on how to learn Korean when he first came, since his parents were too busy with work to teach him how— _they still are_ , a small voice in the back of his mind reminds him, _they’re still too busy to help him out_. He’d huddled in the dark underneath his blankets after his brother had fallen asleep for the night and shone a flashlight at the worn pages to try to make out the words.

 _Ka na da ra ma ba sa_ , Junhui had mouthed to himself in the darkness, sounding out the vowels and the consonants that were at the same time so familiar to what he’d grown up with back in Shenzhen, but yet, so different, _ah ja cha ka ta pa ha_.

It had taken a few months of using the backs of scrap paper that his parents would’ve just thrown away as practice for writing down Korean words he needed to memorize before he’d been confident enough to move onto forming real sentences. It had taken an even longer time than that for him to stop staring in the mirror and hearing himself sound words out before he’d gone out and ordered a full meal on his own without anyone to help him.

It’s how he’s always been. His friends always tell him that he’s too clingy for his own good, that he’s too touchy and too careless with his affections, that there’s no way he’s not doing this on purpose, but Junhui thinks they’re at least halfway wrong. He isn’t like this because he wants to be, he’s like this because he’s spent so many years on his own, trying to navigate an unfamiliar world with unfamiliar customs and words and food. He’s used to this, this constant self-improvement that he’s always needed to keep up, but that doesn’t mean he likes it.

He’s _tired_. He’s tired of all of the expectations that people have put on the boy from China, the boy from China who learned a new language to fluency in two years, the boy from China who’s set to earn scholarships at universities across the nation. He’s tired of the constant race against time, the race against his fellow students, the race against everyone he’s considered his friends. It doesn’t make sense to him that for him to succeed, other people have to fail.

He’s tired.

Junhui sighs and sets down his pencil, tilting his head over so he can put his chin in his hands and stare out of the window. He watches as a flock of white birds— Pigeons? Doves? Junhui isn’t sure, he doesn’t have the best grasp on bird watching— takes flight from the trees, their wings beating furiously in the wind. It’s a small and foolish and dumb thought, but as Junhui watches them disappear past where he can see, he wishes, for just a second, that he could be like them.

He wants to be free to live his life the way he’s wanted to. He wants to breathe in the air of a place that doesn’t remind him of the hopes and dreams of a failed businessman and a housewife who were eager to make it big in a country across the sea. He wants to see the sights of a city that doesn’t make his stomach roil with unease and discomfort.

He wants to hear the sounds of a country where the letters are blocky and smoothly defined, wants to savor the aftertaste of his favorite street foods, wants to stretch his arms out and know that no matter where he reaches out for, he’ll end up pointing at someone who speaks the same language he does, rather than expecting it to be a fifty-fifty chance of being a hit or a miss.

Junhui sighs loudly again, drawing the attention of the teacher back to his seat in the corner before he straightens up and plasters a smile on his face. The teacher gives him a stern look, a warning clearly written out in his expression, but Junhui’s smile fades nearly as soon as the teacher turns his back again.

He misses China. He has friends here, good friends, but there’s something in him that longs for the past. He doesn’t know what spurred this on, but there’s no mistaking the once-unfamiliar feelings of homesickness and loneliness anymore. Wonwoo and Soonyoung and Jihoon are nice and all, but they have their own lives, their own problems, to worry about, and he can’t bother them with his own.

“Junhui, please start reading from where the last student left off.”

Junhui jerks at the mention of his name, and he glances over to Wonwoo, who’s sitting just a seat away from him on his right. Wonwoo points at the third paragraph up from the bottom of the page of their textbook, and Junhui clears his throat to start reading.

“The American psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs defines the pattern that human motivations move through in life. It starts with the most basic and fundamental physiological needs, such as the need for food and water, before continuing on to needs such as the needs for shelter and love.” Junhui flips the page before continuing. “After that come the needs involved in further development, mainly psychological and based on self-improvement. Those are the stages of esteem, self-actualization, and self-transcendence.”

“Very good, Junhui. Who’s next? Minji, please continue from where Junhui left off.”

Junhui cradles his chin in his hand again after the girl starts speaking, idly spinning the bracelet on his wrist around. A hierarchy of needs, huh? He wonders just how many he’s fulfilled so far. His attention drifts off to the flock of white birds that’s returned to roost in the trees again.

They’re so lucky, and they don’t even know it.

 

“You were weird in science class today,” Wonwoo remarks during lunch. He’s nursing a carton of strawberry milk, and Junhui watches Wonwoo try to stack that carton of milk on top of Junhui’s water bottle before he gives up and jams the straw through the opening. “What’s wrong with you? Didn’t sleep enough? Too busy watching anime to sleep at a normal person time?”

Junhui stares at Wonwoo and contemplates how easily it would be to get away with a lie. There’s a part of him that wants to tell Wonwoo about everything that he’s been feeling so far, but there’s also a part of him that tells him to keep everything buried deep inside himself. So he decides to take a third option.

“Hey, where’s the boyfriend? Why isn’t your usual personal chef here today?”

Wonwoo rolls his eyes. “Mingyu’s at a swim meet today, thanks for asking, but i know you don’t really care. Fess up, Wen Junhui, your sneaky tactics have nothing on me. I remember everything.”

He punctuates the last sentence with a loud slurp of strawberry milk, and Junhui winces. Right.

He’s forgotten how absurdly observant Wonwoo can be when it comes to things that don’t really matter. They haven’t even known each other for that long— he’d only met Wonwoo at the beginning of their third and last year in high school when they’d been seated next to each other. They’d bonded over how awful their English teacher’s haircut was (Junhui maintains that it really was terrible, but they’ve come to love and appreciate it in a love-hate way) and how nice their Korean teacher was (she gave them five extra minutes to work on their essays for each exam if the prompt was particularly difficult, which Junhui appreciated a lot), and the rest— well, it’s history.

Becoming friends with Wonwoo meant becoming friends with Mingyu, which meant becoming friends with Seokmin, which meant becoming friends with Seungkwan, which meant becoming friends with Soonyoung, which meant becoming friends with Jihoon, which meant that Junhui’s once nonexistent circle of friends expanded to a loud and rowdy bunch faster than the blink of an eye.

It’s not that he minds— he loves it, actually. He’d always kept his distance from all of the kids throughout the three years of junior high school and then the first two years of high school because he hadn’t known if they would accept him as he was. These guys do, though, for all of his lingering touches and flying hugs, and Junhui’s never been happier.

He loves how openly Soonyoung and Seungkwan will show their affection for the others in their group, how enthusiastic Mingyu and Seokmin are to include Junhui in group lunches or study parties, how much Wonwoo and Jihoon can talk about the topics that interest them the most. There’s a certain kind of charm to how well the seven of them fit together, but it’s an odd number, which means that if they ever pair up to do anything at all, the one who’s left out is always Junhui.

It’s not their fault, really; they’ve known each other for longer than they’ve known him, and to their credit, they try to include him in everything. It’s just that sometimes, it feels just a bit too forced, too awkward, and those are the times that Junhui makes up an excuse to go home early so he doesn’t have to be the seventh wheel. Sometimes, he wishes there were just one more person with him— someone he could relate to, someone to make their group eight.

But it’s not like he can tell Wonwoo all of this, so he clamps his lips shut and tamps down the urge in him to spill everything.

“Earth to Junhui?” Wonwoo’s voice jerks Junhui out of his thoughts, and he startles. Wonwoo’s leaning over him, waving a hand in front of his face and staring down at him with a pinched expression on his lips.

“What? Oh, sorry. Nothing’s wrong,” Junhui lies.

Wonwoo settles back on his heels, but his lips are still pursed together. “Junhui, if you have something that you want to talk about, you can tell me. Seriously. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

Friends. That’s what they are. Junhui can tell him.

Junhui nods before swallowing. He has to think about what he wants to say. “I— I just miss China, I guess. It’s been a long time since I went home.” He shrugs. “Shenzhen is just too far and too expensive to take a weekend trip to, and my parents won’t exactly let me go home on my own, so I’m stuck here.”

It’s not a lie, really, but it’s a lie by omission, and Junhui has to stop himself from blurting everything else out. Wonwoo’s face visibly relaxes at that, though, which means that this is enough for today. Maybe he’ll tell Wonwoo about everything else some other time. For now, though, Junhui lets Wonwoo pat him on the hand.

“I think I kind of know what you’re going through,” Wonwoo starts, a little hesitantly.

“Yeah?”

Wonwoo nods. “I came up here to Seoul from Changwon a few years back, and so did Jihoon, but from Busan. I missed my friends from my elementary and middle schools a _lot_ , you wouldn’t even believe how much I cried over them.”

“You? Cry? Well, I’d never!” Junhui fakes an overly exaggerated gasp.

Wonwoo punches Junhui lightly in the arm. “Yeah, you asshole. I bet you cried a lot too, don’t lie.”

Junhui hums. “I did, but you get zero points for guessing.”

“Anyway, when I first came here, I missed everyone so much that I’d refuse to make friends with all of the kids here. I was a total loner back then.” Wonwoo laughs. “You probably wouldn’t recognize me at all.”

“Did something happen?”

“It was— hmm, the summer after my second year of middle school? I was checking up on my old friends on Kakao, trying to make plans with them over the summer, but it turned out that they all made plans without me. They thought that I’d already be going on trips and stuff with friends in Seoul, so they didn’t think to include me.”

Junhui’s mouth is dry. He’d had no idea, but then again, Wonwoo’s never opened up to him about his past before. Neither has Junhui, now that he thinks about it. “I’m sorry, Wonwoo. About your friends from Changwon. That sucks.”

Wonwoo shrugs. “Yeah, it did, but I got really good at video games over the summer. Did you know I broke a bunch of personal records? Hell yeah. I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that I should’ve made friends while I had the chance to without looking to the past so much. You have to live your life while you can, right? I think it’s totally fine to miss your home, and you can totally keep in touch with your old friends, but to stay too attached to the past means that you’re giving up a lot of your future. We could all go visit Shenzhen after graduation or something if you want.”

There’s a silence that grows thick and heavy in between them, and Junhui doesn’t know if the reason his throat is tight is because he’s about to cry or if it’s because something in his lunch is giving him an allergic reaction. He also has no idea which one he’d prefer.

“I didn’t know you were such a deep guy, Wonwoo. Should we start referring to you as a philosopher? Or do you want to be known as a revolutionary thinker?” Junhui says, and that earns him another hit on the arm.

“I hate you,” Wonwoo says, bringing his carton of strawberry milk back up to his mouth.

“Seriously, though, thanks. I really appreciate it.” Junhui grins, small, before wrestling with himself about whether or not he wants to say this next thing. He decides that he’s going to. He has to live in the present, right? “I love you, man.”

Wonwoo ends up spluttering, his strawberry milk flying from his mouth and onto the ground and Junhui’s legs, and the only reason it doesn’t end up all over his school uniform is because he’d predicted being in the splash zone and moved backwards just a teeny tiny bit. Junhui laughs and laughs and laughs at the shell-shocked expression unfolding over Wonwoo’s face until Wonwoo ends up bursting into peals of laughter as well, the sounds of their happiness carrying over in the wind.

They’ll be fine. He’ll be fine.

 

The house is cold and dark when Junhui lets himself back in after school’s over. He’s used to this. Both of his parents are busy at work, after all, and his younger brother is taking after school classes. He doesn’t blame any of them for not being around— his parents are working hard to support their family in a foreign land, and his little brother is just trying to get into the more advanced classes. They’re all working their hardest and trying their best, and Junhui owes it to them to do the same.

He waits for his brother to come home before making a quick dinner for the two of them, and once they’re done, his brother drifts upstairs to work on his homework. Junhui clears the dishes and takes them to the sink, watching the sun set as he rinses them off.

Soonyoung had asked him at the beginning of the year if he danced, and Junhui had said no. A small voice in the back of his brain had said _liar liar liar_ , and Junhui had quashed it down. He hadn’t known if he was comfortable enough in his own skin to watch himself move in front of a mirror again, let alone dance in front of all of his peers.

He thinks he’s ready now, though. Wonwoo’s right— he can’t keep living in the past and hoping to go back to what once was. He has to live for himself now, and if that means taking risks and facing life with open arms, so be it. There’s a festival later on in the autumn where student groups can showcase their talents, and Junhui knows that Soonyoung and the dance club he founded are going to be participating again.

That night, Junhui climbs into bed after finishing all of his readings and problem sets. He’s tired to the bone, and once he lies down and puts his head down onto his pillow, he nearly falls asleep right away. He stretches his right hand out towards the ceiling, though, and watches the moonlight glint off of the band of jade around his wrist.

Tomorrow, he’ll go find Soonyoung before class starts and ask him about joining his dance club, and everything will be fine. Junhui closes his eyes and imagines himself standing on stage again, his blond hair a striking contrast to the black clothes he’ll wear, and he thinks that instead of just going along with what everyone else wants him to be and what everyone wants him to do, for the first time, he feels like he can carve out a place for himself here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi all! ^__^ so this is what i've been working on for the past.. month or so! this chapter was pretty much just exposition and setting up the plot, but it gets going in the next one, which should be coming along in 4 days or so :'') while this doesn't follow kimi no na wa completely to every last detail, i'd really love it if those of you who have already seen it refrained from spoiling potential plot point, but if you're just super excited i totally understand hehe
> 
> also this is set in the same universe as [seven days](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11458602/), but it's not a sequel or prequel or anything, so it's not necessary at all to read that before this, although there will be a few wink wink nudge nudges along the way. 
> 
> thanks for reading! ^__^


	2. your dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> junhui has a dream where he wakes up as some kid named minghao, and he's only slightly annoyed that this minghao kid has better fashion sense than he does.

The first thing Junhui notices when he wakes up is the familiar scent of congee cooking on the stove. His parents haven’t made it for him in _ages_ , and he’s excited to taste it again. Then he realizes several things: first, that it’s a weekday, and his parents should already be at work, so there’s no reason for breakfast to be ready in the morning. The blanket covering him is thin and frayed, unlike the thick and fluffy one he uses at home. The pillow underneath his head is hard, and Junhui’s never liked hard pillows. He’ll only use the soft ones. This is all wrong.

His eyes shoot open, and it’s only then that he realizes that he isn’t in his home at all. The room he’s in is much, much smaller than his own at home. He’s laying on a mattress on the ground, the bed sheets barely clinging onto the bed, and when he looks to his right, there’s another empty mattress next to him with folded blankets and pillows stacked on top of it. It’s a lot hotter and more humid than he remembers it being in Seoul, too, and Junhui pushes himself up to sit against the wall.

His fingers are thinner than they’d been, long and slender, and his nails are trimmed down, short and neat. He’s clad in just a sleeveless tank and shorts, and there’s a bracelet on his left wrist. Junhui wrinkles his nose. This is probably the most detailed dream he’s ever had. He doesn’t remember ever having a dream where he could count the stripes on his tank top or where he could see every small scratch or bruise on his legs. Why does he have bruises on his legs, anyway? That’s weird— the last time Junhui remembers ever having bruises on his legs was when he danced in Shenzhen and fell all the time.

He drags himself out of bed, rolling over and flopping onto the ground and letting the blanket tangle around his feet. There’s a small mirror on the table next to the closet, so he crawls over and peers into it. All things considered, he could be uglier. He examines his face. It’s not a bad one to have a dream in, to be honest. His eyes are large and wide, and his ears are vaguely pointed at the ends. It’s kind of cute, like an elf’s ears or something. He feels like a character in a fantasy role playing game.

Junhui turns his head this way and that, inspecting his face. He has earrings here, two in his right lobe and two in his left lobe and one in the cartilage in his left ear. His hair is dyed a light brown, something that Junhui couldn’t ever imagine himself doing since his school is so strict about the hair colors the students are allowed to have— apparently, Junhui’s a lot cooler in his dream than he is in real life.

He notices that there’s a light smattering of moles all over his face— there’s one next to his left ear, one just underneath his right eye, and one on his neck. Junhui takes a quick glance underneath his tank to check if there are any moles scattered underneath, and yep, there are. He looks back up, face burning— even if it’s just a dream, he feels a little weird about looking at someone else’s body like this.

“Minghao! Get up, you’ll be late for school! Come have breakfast!”

Junhui’s head swivels towards the source of the sound. It must be coming from the kitchen. He picks himself up, marveling at the feel of the wood grain underneath his fingertips and at how _real_ this dream feels. The person he’s supposed to be in this dream is named Minghao, he guesses. It’s more than comforting to hear only Mandarin spoken in his dream this time— usually, they’re a weird mashup of Korean and Mandarin and Cantonese and the bits of Japanese he’s learned from watching all of those Studio Ghibli movies.

He wonders just what kind of dream this is going to be— is he going to end up running down the street from a giant green dragon with flaming red eyes? Is the voice calling him downstairs actually one belonging to a haunted spirit who can never leave the human world? Is he expected to have to undergo superhuman tasks in order to save the princess down the street?

Junhui opens the door almost gingerly, half expecting a cannonball to come flying at him, but nothing happens. He makes it to the dinner table without much incident at all, and the lady in the kitchen scoops up congee into a bowl for him. This must be his dream mom.

“Hi, mom,” Junhui says because he wants to be nothing but polite to everyone in his dreams. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Congee with fish. Your favorite! Eat up, Minghao,” she replies, leaning forward to pinch Junhui’s cheek. It hurts, and Junhui instinctively recoils. His dream mom puts her hands on her hips, pressing her lips together in a thin line before she ladles more congee into the bowl until it’s nearly overflowing. “Oh no, you’ve been so skinny lately. Make sure to finish all of it! If i see even one chunk of fish left, I’m making you finish the entire thing, okay?”

This dream is actually really, really boring. Junhui sits there at the kitchen table, bringing spoonful after spoonful of congee with fish into his mouth. It’s good, and he ends up finishing it faster than he’d expected to, and his dream mom smiles at him across the table.

“Is it good, Minghao?”

“Really good,” Junhui says. He looks down and scrapes the bottom of the bowl with his spoon for the last bits of fish before scooping that into his mouth as well. He scoots his chair backwards and makes to leave, his hands lingering on the bowl. “Thank you, mom.”

“Get ready for school, okay? The bus is leaving soon! If you miss it, you’re going to have to walk!” she calls after him as he disappears back into the room, and he barely remembers to yell out an “Okay!” in response. Back in the room, though, he slouches against the wall, looking over at the mattresses with the blankets folded on top of them. The other one must’ve been his dream mom’s, and he feels bad just leaving his pillow and blanket there, so he reaches over and starts folding them.

When he’s done, he ambles over to the washroom, brushing his teeth and staring at himself in the bigger mirror. This is the most realistic dream he’s ever had— he doesn’t remember ever having a dream this painfully realistic, this painfully boring. He stretches, his joints popping, and he sighs. Well, as long as he’s stuck in this dream, he might as well make the most of it.

The school uniform is easy enough to find. It’s hanging in the closet, ironed and clean. Junhui guesses that his dream mom must’ve ironed it the night before or something. What an advanced dream to care about small details such as these. He pulls his tank top over his head and shrugs off his shorts before slipping into the uniform shirt and slacks. He starts to button up the shirt before he sees a tie hanging in the closet as well, and he knots it around his neck after he’s buttoned up his shirt all the way.

He takes a moment to check himself out in the mirror. It fits him nicely, his clothes hugging his body, and Junhui makes faces at himself in the mirror. Somehow, the image of someone with five piercings having such a tightly knot tie is hilarious to Junhui, and he almost loosens his tie and unbuttons the first few buttons before he decides that it’ll be a lot funnier to leave it this way. He likes the contrast, after all.

Junhui straightens up and looks at himself one last time. He can do this. He’ll be this Minghao for one day and then he’ll wake up and go back to being Junhui. It’ll be fun. Maybe he’ll even be a good student today. He picks the phone off of the table where it’d been charging and grabs the backpack on the ground before closing the bedroom door behind him.

He kisses his dream mom on the cheek before he heads out the front door, and it’s when he takes his first step outside that he realizes that he’s not in Korea anymore. The street signs are all written in Mandarin, and everyone talking to each other on the sidewalks is speaking in Mandarin, and Junhui hadn’t known before now that he could miss a language this much, but he does.

He doesn’t even know how long he stands there for, staring at all of the towering skyscrapers in the distance and the handwritten advertisements for street food around him. He breathes in, fills his lungs with the smells of fried duck and black bean noodles.

“Excuse me!” Junhui taps an older woman just passing by on the shoulder. She turns, her expression mixed. “Excuse me, auntie, but could you tell me where we are right now?”

“We’re in Anshan, young boy,” the woman says, and she cocks her head to the side. “Are you lost?”

Junhui pauses. He doesn’t have any idea how to get to school, and he doesn’t know which school it is that he’s supposed to go to, so he might as well ask while people are still feeling friendly. “I— yes, I am. Do you know how to get to the nearest high school from here?”

She points him down the right way, and once he’s sure that he has the directions down, he bows to her. She leaves in a flurry, the smells of permed hair and tiger balm wafting behind her, and Junhui straightens up to start walking in the direction she’d pointed out. He takes his time, staring at the storefronts laid out in front of him.

It’s so unlike the streets of Seoul, and even though Anshan is nowhere near Shenzhen, even though he’s never even been to Anshan, he feels like he could almost be home. He doesn’t know if this is what Anshan really looks like or if his brain is just conjuring up a similar cityscape to that of Shenzhen’s, but it’s so familiar and yet not at the same time.

All the same, though, he can feel the sensation of being back on his well-worn streets and all of the corners he’d grown up playing in coursing through his veins. He can practically imagine himself and his brother running around and pretending to be soldiers and horses in these cramped alleyways, can practically imagine his dad and his mom standing there at the entrance to their small home and waiting for them to come back.

Junhui exhales and starts walking again. He has a lot of ground to cover.

 

When Junhui gets to the school fifteen minutes after school had started at eight, all eyes turn to him. He winces at the sudden stares. He’d once loved being the center of everyone’s attention, but not after they’d also come with whispers of “Oh, look, it’s the new kid” and “The one from China? He doesn’t know Korean, right?” Now, though, he’s looking back at stares of something like amazement and wonder, and Junhui blinks.

“Hi, sorry I’m late, I got lost on the way, and there was a mommy cat and her kittens stuck in a tree so I had to go get them and—”

“Xu Minghao.” The teacher’s voice rings out through the air, and Junhui stops in his tracks.

“Sir?”

“Thank you so much for coming to school today. We’d almost given up all hope of seeing you here today,” the teacher says, and Junhui is even more confused. “It’s been a long time since we last saw your face, Minghao. There you go. Take a seat. You can help clean up the classroom after school’s over since you were late.”

Junhui takes his seat by the window almost gingerly, sitting down amidst the whispers from the rest of the students. It’s a completely different feeling to be addressed in Mandarin and to reply in the same language instead of having to translate the Korean he hears to Mandarin and then try to reply back in Korean. All of his classmates are still staring, and he can feel the polite smile he’s been forcing on his face start to crumble.

“Attention!” The teacher calls out, and then everyone’s heads snap to face forward. Junhui looks at the notebooks on the desk in front of him. _Xu Minghao_ , the name on the cover pages reads. He flips through the pages, and to absolutely no surprise at all, the notes written down are hastily scribbled.

Instead of notes, there are a lot of shapes drawn in the margins, circles and squares with instructions that Junhui recognizes as blocking from when he danced. It doesn’t surprise him at all that his dream self is someone who neglects his education to dance— he’d consider it the perfect representation of who he wants to be inside, someone who still lives among familiarity and isn’t afraid to pursue his dreams.

Junhui puts his chin back on his hand, staring at the chalkboard in front of him. It’s another riveting lecture about the coal mines of Anshan, and Junhui can almost feel himself starting to fall asleep during class. Almost, but not quite, since one of his classmates, the guy sitting next to him, prods him in the arm and motions him to lean closer.

“Weren’t you supposed to be at practice this morning? I thought you said you were going to have really intense practice this entire week?” the guy asks, and Junhui feels his eyebrows knot up in bewilderment.

“Oh, uh. Um. Hmm. I don’t know anything about any practice. Do I dance?”

The other guy stares at him, his features twisting in sheer confusion. “I can’t tell if you’re joking or not, Minghao. What’s wrong with you today? Seriously? _Do you dance?_ ”

“I don’t know, what’s wrong with _you_? Do I? I’m just asking,” Junhui says defensively. It’s not his fault he’s just been dumped in some strangely realistic dream world without any idea of what’s going on. He takes a peek at the guy’s notebooks to try to read the characters on the cover, and when he does, he starts. The characters are different from the ones he uses to write his own name, but the way they pronounce it is exactly the same— Junhui.

“Ugh, come on, stop being like this, Minghao. It’s not like you to be so weird right before an audition,” the other Junhui mutters. “You’re acting like a completely different person today.”

Well, yeah, Junhui wants to snort. He _is_ a different person, and he has absolutely no clue why people in his dreams are talking back to him like this. He wrinkles his nose and goes back to pretending to take notes about the flammable properties of coal, when he’s really just flipping through the notebooks, looking for anything funny about this that he can tell his friends tomorrow at school.

It’s a fairly normal notebook, if he can look past all of the dance formations jotted down in the margins. It’s a lot neater than the typical guy’s handwriting, the strokes all calligraphic and brush-like, and Junhui stares morosely down at his own hands. Maybe if he tries to write something down— he writes down _hi, I’m Junhui_  on the page next to one of the series of circles, and he winces almost immediately. Nope, being in a dream body doesn’t change how irreparably awful his handwriting is, so he settles for just drawing cats all over the pages.

It’s a shame, Junhui thinks, that he won’t be able to keep some of the cats he’s drawn when he wakes up. He likes some of them a lot.

 

He’s about to pack up and go back home when the other Junhui catches him by the arm.

“Minghao, are you alright?” the other Junhui asks, and Junhui blinks.

“I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be fine?” Junhui asks, throwing his pens and pencils haphazardly into his backpack. There’s another notebook hidden underneath the math textbook they’d been using earlier, and Junhui tosses that into his bag as well. He’ll look at that later.

“You’re… you’re really weird today. Are you sick? Is there something wrong? You can tell me, you know. We’re best friends.” The other Junhui squints at him, and without even really knowing why, Junhui takes a step back.

“Uh, hey, Junhui.”

“What?”

“Is it okay if I call you Hui?” Junhui watches as the other Junhui’s eyes narrow, like he’s trying to decipher the meaning of Junhui’s request. It’s not that deep, really— it’s just a little weird to think of someone else being named Junhui as well.

“Sure. Fine, whatever. But remember to go to practice, okay?” Hui’s eyes soften. “I don’t want to see you giving up on your dream so quickly.”

“Yeah, of course. I don’t know what was wrong with me today, I just felt a little sick and couldn’t go,” Junhui lies, the words slipping easily between his teeth. Somehow, it’s easy to fabricate an excuse out of thin air for a persona he’s never even worn, and he feels strangely bad for doing it. He doesn’t even know why he feels so bad about lying even as he starts walking back to the house— it’s not like there are any real consequences to this, and besides, it’s just a dream.

He’ll admit that it’s one hell of a dream, though, and when he wakes up, he’s going to try to remember what he ate for dinner the night before to see if he can get realistic dreams like these again. It’s boring, sure, but it’s more interesting than any of his other dreams. He doesn’t even remember his other dreams, but he’s sure that he’ll definitely remember everything about Anshan.

He goes through the usual motions— even eating and showering seem hyper-realistic as well— and it’s not long before he’s in bed again, tugging the blanket around himself. He pulls out the notebook that he’d found underneath the math textbook and flips it open, idly skimming through the pages.

He nearly bashes his head on the wall when he gets to a page that has writing on it, but it’s not the same familiar blocky Chinese characters he’s used to; it’s written in Korean. Junhui stares at the script for longer than he’d like to admit, marveling at how consistently neat the handwriting he sees on all of the notebooks is, even across languages.

The weight of the bracelet on his wrist is almost comforting when he leans back down against the pillow to read the words written on the page. They’re just generic sentences, things like _the sky is blue today_  or _I want to eat a cheeseburger_ , but seeing this just seems like a breach of someone’s privacy to Junhui.

He can tell by the uncertainty and the hesitation of the pen strokes that it’s from a hand that isn’t used to writing in Korean, and he can relate to that on a deeper level. They’re the same struggles that he’d gone through six years ago, and he feels for this person in his dreams who’s trying to learn a completely new language. He just wishes there were some way to help.

Junhui almost hits his head on the wall again when he sits up to grab a pencil from the backpack. He hesitates for just a split second before he puts pencil to paper and starts writing in minor corrections in the lines between the sentences. They’re just small things, like “you should put this stroke before that one” or “I think a better way of phrasing this sentence would be like this,” but once he’s done, he feels like he’s done something huge.

Grinning from ear to ear, Junhui puts the pencil and notebook back into the backpack before settling into the pillow and blanket once more. He appreciates the trouble his mind had gone to so he could have a fulfilling dream tonight, and he can’t even imagine all the individual tastes and sounds and images that had come together to make such a realistic world.

Junhui drifts off to sleep like that, wondering if he’ll ever come back to this dream world of his again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yay!!!! we are officially in anshan!!!!! please forgive any geographical or historical inaccuracies; i've never been to that part of china u_u 
> 
> anywayyyy thank you for reading and leaving kudos i love u all *_*


	3. your voice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> junhui may or may not be going crazy. who knows?

_“Don’t you remember who I am?”_

 

Junhui jolts awake, startled by his phone, the whispers of his dream floating away with the sunlight. He groans and slaps his hand over his phone and cutting off the shrill line of _na na na_ s. It’s way too early for this. He rolls over and presses his face into the pillows to avoid the harsh rays of sunlight already beginning to filter into the room, willing his body to _just go back to sleep already._

Five minutes later, or what feels like exactly two and a half seconds to Junhui, the blares start up again, and Junhui can feel a headache start to form in his temples. It’s probably better to get up now than to spend another twenty minutes rotting away in bed, even though that’s honestly all that he wants to do right now. His head is _throbbing_ , and scratch his previous thought— all he wants is a tall glass of water and a good painkiller. He’d had a weird dream last night, but he can’t remember too much of it now. What was it again?

“Oh my god,” he mutters, slapping his phone and shutting off the alarm before pushing himself up off the bed. He runs a hand through his hair, fluffing it up, and scratches at his stomach with the other. His hair feels a bit dry, somewhat like straw, and Junhui wrinkles his nose. Did he not wash his hair as well as he thought he did last night?

Judging by the lack of noise in the kitchen downstairs, there’s no one home except for his sleeping brother. As he makes his way to the bathroom to wash up, Junhui thinks idly about the dream he’d had last night. He wishes, just a little selfishly, that he had a mom who’d stay back to make him congee for breakfast and a dad who would watch television with him after school. He knows his parents are working insanely hard, though, so he doesn’t let himself dwell too much on it.

He pushes open the bathroom door, trudging to the sink to wash his face, and he splashes water over his closed eyes before he looks up at the mirror— and screams.

His hair is _blond_. It’s this platinum silvery shade of yellow, with just a bit of a sheen to it, and even though Junhui’s still concerned about his parents and, with just a little bit of hope and luck, they’ll refrain from kicking Junhui out of the house, he’s more concerned with the questions of _why the fuck is my hair yellow_  and _who the fuck dyed my hair_.

He pinches himself hard on the inside of his wrist to make sure this isn’t a dream and he’s still safely ensconced in bed, but the pinch hurts like absolute hell and he yelps and yeah, this definitely isn’t a dream. He peers at himself in the mirror. It looks like a pretty good dye job, and he can’t pick out the color of any of his original strands of hair anymore.

He straightens, huffing at his own reflection. This must be Soonyoung or Wonwoo’s idea of a practical joke, albeit one that’ll probably get him expelled from school for having a nonconforming hairstyle and hair color. Whatever, he’ll deal with that when the time comes. For now, though, he grabs his toothbrush and toothpaste from a lower shelf than he’d remembered putting it last— is his entire family getting in on the joke, too, and when will this madness _end_?— and sets his mind to brushing his teeth to the opening tune of one of his mother’s favorite Beijing soap operas.

 

“Hey, Junhui, we’re so glad to have you on our team,” Soonyoung says, nudging Junhui as he and Jihoon push some desks over to sit next to Junhui and Wonwoo.

Junhui stares blankly back at him. “What?” he asks, then turns to look at Wonwoo, begging with his eyes for some kind of elucidation. “What does he mean?”

Instead of answering him, though, Wonwoo just turns his head to the side and _hmphs_. Junhui keeps staring.

“What— wait, what? What’s going on? What happened? What does he mean by _team_?”

“Wonwoo doesn’t need to tell you,” Jihoon sniffs. “He doesn’t owe you anything. None of us do.”

Junhui is, as if that were even possible, even more confused now. “Wait, I really, really have no idea what you’re talking about. I wanted to ask you guys some questions, actually. Why is my hair blond? Did one of you guys do this, because it’s really not that funny.”

Wonwoo snorts. “You think _that_ isn’t funny? Try ignoring all of your friends for a day and wandering off without even letting us know where you were going.”

“Hey, Wonwoo, I thought we said we weren’t gonna talk about that,” Soonyoung butts in, leaning over to put a hand on Wonwoo’s knee. “Come on, he was probably just having a bad day or something, it’s fine. We’re still fine, right?”

That last question seems like it’s directed at Junhui, and he’s even more confused now. “What? You guys keep saying things like you think I’m going to know what you mean, but I can assure you that I seriously have no idea what you’re talking about. What happened?”

The three of them exchange a look, and they must’ve come to some kind of unspoken agreement because Soonyoung’s opening his mouth and explaining everything to Junhui. “So basically, yesterday, you came to school super late, and you were all sweaty and gross, and I asked you like I always do if you wanted to join my dance team for our autumn festival, and you actually said yes! So I asked if you were serious, but then you looked at me like you didn’t even understand what I was saying, and then you kind of just walked away from me and got in your seat. Wonwoo tried to talk to you the entire day.”

“I did not,” Wonwoo mutters.

“Shut up, four eyes,” Soonyoung says cheerfully before continuing. “As I was saying before someone so rudely interrupted me, he tried to talk to you basically the entire day just so he could figure out if something was wrong or not, but you kept ignoring him, and when Jihoon tried, you ignored him, too. You just walked away from us at the end of the day, so that’s why we weren’t sure if, I don’t know, if we were still friends anymore? Or, I don’t know, if something’s up that you want to talk about?”

At that last word, Soonyoung gives Junhui a look. It’s one that’s tinged with all sorts of emotions, and Junhui has no idea why Soonyoung would ever be so broken up about something like this when they should already all know that Junhui won’t ever leave them.

“Yeah,” Junhui says. He doesn’t remember doing any of this at all, and he hopes that they’re not playing some sort of extremely long practical joke that’ll probably end up in tears, but he leans forward to give Soonyoung a hug all the same. “Of course we’re friends.”

“So much drama, and it’s only Wednesday,” Jihoon sighs, and /that’s/ what gets Junhui’s attention.

“Wednesday? Did you say Wednesday?”

“Yeah? It’s Wednesday today.” Jihoon looks up from his lunch, his eyebrows knitting together. “What’s wrong with you? It’s Wednesday.”

“No,” Junhui says slowly. “It’s Tuesday. Yesterday was Monday.”

“Wen Junhui, are you kidding me right now?” That’s Wonwoo, and he sticks his phone in front of Junhui’s face so he can see the date clearly written there. It _is_ a Wednesday.

“What the hell? Also, Wonwoo, that’s gross, I can’t believe your lock screen background’s actually a selca of you two. Disgusting. Romance. But are you serious? It’s Wednesday?”

The three of them give him the most unimpressed looks Junhui’s ever seen in his entire life, which he takes to mean an affirmative— it’s Wednesday. But why doesn’t he remember doing anything on Tuesday? It’s a complete blank in his mind, and no matter how hard he tries, he can only remember falling asleep on Monday night with a head full of black hair and waking up on Wednesday morning with platinum blond hair.

“I— I don’t remember anything. I seriously can’t remember what happened yesterday.” Junhui stares down at the desk, suddenly nauseous. He can’t eat lunch anymore today. His stomach is doing flips and somersaults in his body, and he can’t get it to stop. “What’s happening to me?”

“Check your phone,” Jihoon says. “I saw you taking some pictures of the birds yesterday. Maybe they’re still there? They could help you remember what happened yesterday.”

Junhui pulls out his phone and unlocks it, and sure enough, there are photos of the same white doves he’d seen on Monday afternoon there on his phone. He has no memory of taking these pictures, though, and he’s absolutely certain he’d remember if he took any photos that were as nice as these are. He flips through the photos with something like awe, but his blood starts to turn to ice. He can see a jade bracelet in the very corner of one of the photos, and he knows that that’s the same one that he has. It must’ve been him who took the pictures, then, and that just opens up a completely new set of horrifying questions.

“I don’t remember taking any of these. Seriously. What’s wrong with me? Am I going crazy?” Junhui asks, more to the air in front of him than to any of the others. “I don’t remember any of this at all. What’s going on?”

The others are quiet, staring at the desks or their hands, and Junhui feels a little bad for ruining everyone’s lunches, but he can’t keep all of his feelings to himself anymore. There’s so much he doesn’t know, so much he doesn’t remember, that he feels like his brain is about to explode.

“Junhui,” Soonyoung says, slowly and hesitantly, after exchanging a look with both Wonwoo and Jihoon. “There’s something else that I think we should tell you.”

Junhui isn’t sure he wants any more surprises. “What is it?”

“Yesterday, we saw you dancing. It was after school, when we wanted to get hot dogs or something after all the student council activities ended,” Soonyoung says. “Jihoon and I went to go look for you in 3-B but when we got there, Wonwoo said that you already left, so we went to look for you in some classrooms. You weren’t dancing in any of the classrooms, though. When we finally found you, you were up on the stage in the auditorium with all the lights shining down on you.”

The fact that Soonyoung saw him dancing isn’t news to Junhui; he dances in empty classrooms sometimes. He’ll push the chairs and the desks off to the side, and he’ll center himself in the middle of the room and start moving to the melodies in his head. It’s calming in a way that nothing else is, but up until now, he hasn’t been confident enough to dance in front of people, so he gets why Soonyoung thinks this is out of the ordinary.

“I know what you’re thinking, and I know you’re probably thinking that I’m crazy or whatever for thinking it’s a big deal, but seriously. Listen to me. You weren’t dancing the way you usually do, though. It was nothing like the way you dance if it’s just the four of us. It was like you were a completely different person,” Soonyoung finishes quietly.

“You also kept speaking in Mandarin, too. None of us could understand what you were saying, and you didn’t even respond to your own name,” Jihoon pipes up. “Like you when you just came here to Seoul? Except you’ve been here for six entire years, so what gives? Do you think it could’ve been some kind of temporary amnesia? Temporarily forgetting all the Korean you’ve learned so far?”

“And what’s with the blond? It’s so bright and shiny, Junhui. This so isn’t you. Who are you?” Wonwoo asks, reaching forward to pat Junhui’s hair down. “I thought you said you didn’t want to go blond because you didn’t think it would look good on you? You didn’t have this when you were at school yesterday, though, so I guess you went and got this done afterwards after having a change of heart.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Junhui says, his voice hollow and his head practically spinning with all of the new information he’s learned. So yesterday, he’d apparently woken up late and gotten to school even later, and then he’d accepted Soonyoung’s offer to join his dance team, and then he’d proceeded to ignore all of his friends for the rest of the day. Then he’d danced on top of the stage in the auditorium, after which he’d presumably gone home and bleached and dyed his hair a striking blonde.

Junhui remembers absolutely none of this. Hell, he barely remembers what he had for breakfast today (for the record, though, it was a piece of toast buttered and slathered with a generous amount of sugar), let alone what happened last year, but he’s fairly certain that he would remember bleaching and dyeing his hair at the very least. Things just don’t add up.

Junhui lifts his head up to stare at his friends in resignation and confusion and worry, and they give him matching stares back.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Soonyoung says, leaning forward and patting Junhui’s hand. “It’s fine, yeah? You probably just had a really stressful day, or maybe you were really tired. None of this is your fault, Junhui.”

“None of it,” Jihoon adds, and Wonwoo nods. The bell signaling the end of their lunch period rings, and Jihoon and Soonyoung straighten up and pack their half-eaten lunches back into their bags. Jihoon gives Junhui a last and lingering look before saying, a little bit softer this time, “Don’t beat yourself up too much over it. I’m sure it’ll all be over in time. In the meantime, don’t worry too much about things like this, okay?”

Soonyoung and Jihoon leave their classroom, and when Wonwoo and Junhui and the rest of their classmates are the only ones left, Wonwoo leans over the gap between their tables.

“Don’t hesitate to reach out or text us, yeah?” Wonwoo pauses momentarily, seeming to consider something in his mind before he shakes his head. “I know I’m not really the most talkative or the best at dispensing wise old man advice, but I’m pretty damn good at listening. Don’t shut yourself off from us, Junhui.”

Junhui’s never felt luckier to have friends like these, where he isn’t even sure he knows who he is anymore. He’s never felt more in need of shoulders to lean on, of people to rely on, and he knows that he has a home right here in their classrooms of 3-A and 3-B. He swallows, his throat tight, and he says, “I’ll keep that in mind, Wonwoo. Thanks.”

Wonwoo gives him a small smile before he turns back to his history textbook, and Junhui follows suit. There’s a long day ahead of him. He’s determined to get to the bottom of this no matter how much sleep he ends up losing before he ends up not being able to sleep at all.

 

Junhui’s walk home is mostly silent. He’s too occupied with thoughts of his recent identity crisis to think about anything else, and he can almost swear that the cats he usually pets on his walk back home give him disapproving and disappointed looks when he passes by without offering any head scratches or belly rubs.

His parents come home early today, and when they make beef noodle soup for dinner that night, Junhui speeds down the stairs so quickly that he would’ve tripped and fallen if it weren’t for the guide rails on the side.

“What’s the occasion?” Junhui asks, his mouth full of chunks of beef and noodles.

“Ah, well, yesterday, you said that you wanted to have a dinner with the four of us all together as a family,” Junhui’s mom says, and he narrows in on the word “Yesterday.”

“Yesterday? Mom, dad, was there anything weird about me yesterday?” Junhui asks, his heart thumping against his chest.

“You mean besides the usual?” his dad jokes, and his mom swats him on the arm.

“No, I don’t think so.” his mom’s eyebrows furrow together. “You did wake up really late yesterday, so your dad and I thought it was just because you were up so late studying. Why? What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing,” Junhui lies easily. He feels like he’s just dodged a massive bullet— he’s intensely grateful that whatever had happened to him yesterday at school hadn’t carried over into his home life. He’d hate for that to happen to his parents.

“Junhui, there was something a little bit weird. I saw you in the bathroom dyeing your hair. I didn’t think that you would know how to do it, but you looked like a natural at it,” his mom laughs. “You should’ve told me you were so into things like this, because I could’ve given you some of my old hair dyes.”

“I don’t think our Junhui wants hair in purple or blue colors, honey,” his dad says lightly, and his mom sticks her tongue out at him before she turns her attention back onto Junhui.

“Why? Is there something wrong with that, dear?”

“Nothing,” Junhui says again, even though he knows for a fact that it sounds shakier and unsure this time. He slurps up the rest of his noodles and downs all of the soup in a big gulp before he sets the bowl, along with his chopsticks and soup spoon, into the sink. “Dinner was so good tonight. Thanks mom, thanks dad!”

Junhui spends the next three hours laying in bed and trying to recreate the events of yesterday. He’s certain that it hadn’t been him, but there’s no way to account for the fact that he doesn’t remember anything that happened at all yesterday. Except— and Junhui’s thoughts drift back to the reflection of a brown-haired boy with earrings that he’d seen looking into the mirror. He technically _had_  gone to school yesterday, except it had been in a school over five hundred kilometers away in a country he hasn’t been back to in years.

There’s a thought floating around in his head, but it’s too crazy, too insane, that he refuses to even entertain it. Instead, Junhui digs through his backpack for his sketchbook. He doesn’t draw too seriously, but he’s been told that if he ever drew a webcomic about cartoon cats, they would gladly support it, and that, to Junhui, is one of the highest compliments of all.

He needs to relieve some stress by drawing dopey looking cats in dopey poses, but as he picks up his sketchbook, he starts to get the slightest inkling that something’s wrong.

“What the hell?” he muses out loud as he flips through the pages of his sketchbook. Most of the pages are as he left them, but some of them have been written in. There aren’t really any coherent sentences, just words and phrases, mostly, and even though some of the writing is in Korean, a lot more of it is in Chinese.

Junhui reads through the pages, his brain flipping back and forth between Korean and Chinese as quickly as the pages do, and he only barely registers the words that he’s seeing. _Who are you? Where am I? What’s going on? Who am I?_

This is weird. This is too weird, and he can’t deal with this. He hopes that it’s just one of his friends trying to play a prank on him, but he knows, deep within his heart, that it’s no joke. The writing looks oddly familiar, though, and Junhui can’t quite put his finger on it.

It’s only when Junhui is in bed after brushing his teeth, getting ready to turn in for the night, that he realizes just why that handwriting in both Korean and Chinese looked so familiar to him. He’s seen that handwriting before, he’s sure of it, but the only problem is that it’s practically impossible for it all to have been written by the same person.

After all, the last place he’d seen handwriting this nice was in Anshan, buried between the pages of a certain Xu Minghao’s notebooks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the realization hits!! don't bleach and dye your hair like this everyone you gotta space it out
> 
> thanks for reading!!! ^__^


	4. your sight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> junhui gets to go on a hike up a mountain. fun! just kidding, junhui's legs are about to fall off. this is Definitely Not Fun.

When Junhui wakes up to the smell of congee and fish again, his legs tangled in a blanket that’s way too thin and his face buried into a pillow that’s way too hard, he knows he’s back in Anshan. He’s starting to doubt whether or not this is even a dream, and this time, he doesn’t wait for someone to call his name for him to get up. He makes his way over to the mirror and checks out his reflection— he still looks like the same Minghao that he was two days ago.

It looks real enough, but is it?

Junhui reaches up to pinch himself on the cheek, and it hurts as much as the first time he’d pinched himself on the inside of his wrist, which is really only starting to make him think that he’d going completely insane because there’s absolutely no way he could be traveling to Anshan every other night without even knowing. It’s impossible, but yet, here he is, trapped in another country until he sleeps. He sighs, making a frowning face at himself in the mirror. He might as well make the most of the day, then.

Junhui goes about the day as usual, going to class and taking dutiful notes on the applications of trigonometry and the science behind fires. By the time he gets back home, he’s tired to the bone, since he’d been roped into dance practice by some of the upperclassmen wearing exercise uniforms. Privately, Junhui thinks that it’s a little weird for him to be addressed as a first year again, especially since he’s a third year back in Seoul, but he’ll let it slide this time. They’d commented on how different Junhui’s style of dancing was, and Junhui had laughed nervously and rubbed the back of his neck and replied in Minghao’s voice that, “I’m just looking for different styles to try out.”

When he’s getting ready for bed, Junhui decides to pick up the notebook that he’d seen the Korean writing in. There’s no real reason he wants to see it; he’s just curious to see if Minghao’s replied or made any changes to what Junhui wrote. He flips through the pages, trying to find where he’d left off, when he gets to a page that’s nearly filled with incomprehensible scribbles that turn just a little less incomprehensible once he realizes it’s written in Korean.

_stop correcting me! who are you? what are you, anyway? you know what, if this is a joke, this isn’t really funny. give me back my notebook and stop writing in it!_

Junhui rolls his eyes and picks up a pencil from inside the backpack to start writing.

 _my name’s junhui, and i’m just a normal guy. i’m not trying to write in your notebook on purpose, it’s just that there were too many mistakes in your writing to ignore_ , he writes. _and it’s not a joke, okay? your grammar is really bad, you should get someone to check it out for you. or consider actually paying attention in class and not falling asleep for once._

Mission accomplished, Junhui lets himself fall back asleep with a smile on his face.

 

It’s Friday when Junhui wakes up and reaches for his phone, and somehow, he’s not surprised at all when he feels it there on the side of his pillow. He makes himself and his brother breakfast, and he’s surprisingly early to school. Somehow, he’s feeling more energized and awake than he usually does even though his calves hurt like _hell_ for some reason.

Wonwoo gives him a bemused stare as soon as he walks through the door of their classroom, and Junhui is acutely aware that the rest of his classmates are staring at him without trying to be too obvious that they’re staring at him. Junhui sits down in his seat with a sigh, looking back over to Wonwoo, and he steels himself for whatever Wonwoo’s going to say he did the day before.

“So what happened to me yesterday? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“What you did yesterday was so crazy, Junhui,” Wonwoo says, laughing a little bit. “Why do you keep acting like this every other day?”

Oh, no. “What did I do?” Junhui asks, and he’s already dreading the answer he’s about to hear.

Wonwoo’s gaze drifts off slightly to the side. “Well,” he hedges. “You kind of… exploded at someone.”

Oh, _no_. “Who did I explode at? Why?”

“We were having lunch and then someone, I don’t know who, asked why you were all of a sudden being so—” Wonwoo hesitates, like he doesn’t know if he wants to say it or not. “Chinese.”

Junhui’s breath leaves him in a loud exhale. “Then?”

“You didn’t do that much. You just asked me if you were the one they were talking about, then knocked over your desk and stood up. Then you told them something like, ‘Why don’t you try moving to another country? We wouldn’t want you in China, though.’ or something.” Wonwoo leans back in his chair, studying Junhui’s face, searching for any sign of reaction. “You don’t remember doing this.”

This is even worse than what Junhui had expected. He knocks his head against the desk, not even caring if he loses a few hundred or so brain cells. “Ugh, why is he like this? Why? Next time we switch, I’m gonna—”

“Why is _who_  like this? Who are you talking about? What’s going on?” Wonwoo asks, leaning over to peer into Junhui’s face. He tries to put his hand to Junhui’s forehead, feeling around for his temperature. “Are you sick?”

Junhui bats Wonwoo’s probing hands away. Exactly how crazy, he thinks ruefully to himself, would he sound if he told Wonwoo the truth? _Hey, so I think that every other night when I fall asleep I wake up in the body of some kid named Xu Minghao who lives in Anshan, and he’s been waking up in my body and doing all sorts of weird shit that I wouldn’t do, but hey! Don’t worry! I’m still sane!_

Instead, he replies, “Nah, I’m not sick. I’ve just been tired lately. I don’t really know why I’ve been acting this way, sorry.” Junhui fakes a yawn and lays his head down on the table. He knows Wonwoo doesn’t believe him at all, judging by the unimpressed expression on his face when Junhui peeks over, but this way, Junhui won’t have to explain why sometimes the guy in his body is probably a random skinny dancer.

The fewer people who know about this, the better, and Junhui’s determined to keep it to just himself.

 

Junhui’s laying on his bed and on his phone when he decides to check his notes. He feels like there might be a grocery list or something in there that he hasn’t looked at in a while, so he exits out of the game he’s been playing and opens his notes. Instead of grocery lists or reminders to himself to visit the school nurse to pick up bandages, though, what he finds is something more interesting.

They’re records of his day written entirely in Chinese, but when he looks more closely, the entries that have been written down into the notes are dated back to the days he was in Anshan, meaning that these are Minghao’s records of what he did. Junhui feels just a little sneaky, almost, looking at the entries even they’re for _his_  life, but he presses on. He has to know what Minghao’s been up to.

_today is tuesday. i think i’m dreaming. if i really am dreaming, this is probably one of the best dreams i’ve ever had. i’m in seoul! korea is as i thought it would be, but i can’t really understand anything here. i went to school, just like i probably was supposed to do, but all these people kept trying to talk to me. they spoke too quickly for me to understand, so that was a little awkward. one of the guys, a shorter one, said something about dancing and of course, i said yes. why would i ever say no to dancing? but yeah, the entire day, the same three guys kept bothering me, and i kind of wasn’t sure what to say to them so i just didn’t say anything at all. oops._

_also, i’ve always wanted to have blond hair, but i was never really that sure if i wanted to do it for real, so i decided that if this is a dream, i might as well go all out, right? it was super easy and convenient enough to find a store that sells easy dye kits, and lucky for me, this junhui guy keeps a lot of cash on him! lucky! i bought two different colors, but one turned out to be this kind of pink color, which i’m not really down for, and even though the korean on the packaging is a little bit hard for me to read, i’m used to dyeing my own hair, so never fear! bleaching took a lot longer than i thought, but i won’t really know what the color looks like after it dries. what a pity, though, i wanted to see what it would look like, but i ended up having to go to sleep… maybe i’ll try that at home?_

_anyway, seoul was fun. hopefully, i’ll wake up in this dream again._

Junhui rolls his eyes skyward. So this is the reason his hair is blond. He keeps reading: there’s an entry dated from yesterday.

_it’s thursday today! i’ve never had dreams that came back this often… i can’t help but think if this is really a dream? it feels too realistic to be one. nothing much happened today, except some asshole in junhui’s classroom made fun of him for being chinese. of course, i don’t really understand what he said, but for some reason, i just knew he was being a dick about junhui (or me, it doesn’t really matter right now), so obviously, i had to teach him a lesson. just kidding, i didn’t hit him or anything. i just taught him a little lesson. sort of. let’s just say that he won’t be talking smack about china again._

_this junhui guy is kind of boring. one of his friends seems pretty cool, though, and he’s the captain of their dance team or something? cool! just like me back home! i think i’m gonna try out for their festival performance or whatever, just to try it out. it can’t hurt, can it? and besides, junhui’s body has obviously danced before, so it won’t be like i’m straining it too much. i’m starting to look forward to the next dreams. until next time, then._

Junhui puts his phone down with something akin to what Einstein must’ve felt when he discovered the theory of relativity, or to what Newton must’ve felt when he first came up with the laws of gravity.

It’s all starting to come together. This Minghao kid is someone who lives in Anshan, and while Junhui lives here in Seoul, they switch bodies every other night in their sleep. They go about their days as the other person, and once they fall asleep in the other’s body, they’ll return to their own. It all makes sense now, except for the part where Junhui has absolutely no logical or rational reason for why this could even be happening, but he won’t think too deeply about that now. His main priority now is to prevent Minghao from screwing up as much of his life as he can.

 

The next time he wakes up in Anshan, it’s immediately obvious that Minghao’s as aware of what’s going on as Junhui is. When Junhui rolls over and and opens his eyes, the notebook that he’d been writing in is open on the side of the bed next to his pillow. It’s never been like this before, which is what makes Junhui pick it up and hold it up to the light to read it.

_hey! wen junhui! yeah, that’s right, i know your name. so it turns out that you and i are switching places. thanks a lot for canceling my dance practices, by the way, try not to get my body too unhealthy. yeah, i know you’ve been eating all of the chips i hid inside the drawers underneath my desk. i live here, do you think i wouldn’t notice? i’m auditioning for a dance company and i have to get this choreo down._

_i thought this was a dream, too, which i guess was a mistake on both of our parts. oops. sorry about the blond thing, i really thought it wasn’t going to last. if it’s any consolation at all, i think it looks good. don’t let it get too brassy, though, you can probably find some purple shampoo at your local convenience store or something. i worked super hard on the bleach and dye, okay? don’t let my hard work go to waste!_

_anyway, if you’re reading this, you’re probably on your way to class. just don’t worry about going to dance practices or anything; i’m not sure i can trust you with my body. i can make up for lost practice time on the days that i’m here, so seriously, don’t worry about it. i’m warning you, if any of the seniors tell me how weird i looked on a day you were here, i’m going to come to seoul and kick your ass, don’t think i won’t._

_i’m watching you, wen junhui._

_(by the way, try to write down what you did today so i won’t be thrown off if someone starts calling me a weird name, okay? also, why did you ask my junhui if you could call him hui? that is so weird. you’re so weird. ugh. bye. for now.)_

Junhui puts the notebook away with a snort. So that’s why Minghao’s friend had been so confused as to why he wasn’t going to his morning practices. He guesses that it makes sense now, but still, he’s going to find some way to get back at Minghao for dyeing his hair blond. He has to admit it, though— it’s practical and easy for Junhui to just write down whatever he did in Minghao’s body that day instead of forcing him to ask his friends what he was up to.

Junhui gets dressed for school, knotting his tie around his neck, and this time, it’s different now that he knows this isn’t just a dream, that this is someone’s body he’s moving around. He’s acutely aware of the blood thrumming through his veins and the breath entering and leaving his lungs, and it’s a wholly indescribable feeling. He shakes himself out of it, slapping himself lightly on the cheeks before heading out of the bedroom and into the kitchen.

Today, there isn’t any congee boiling on the stove. Instead, Minghao’s mother is sitting there at the kitchen table, and when Junhui walks in, she stands up with her eyebrows furrowed.

“Minghao? Why are you dressed for school?”

Junhui looks down at his ensemble, then back up at Minghao’s mom. “I’m going to school?” Junhui tries, and Minghao’s mom’s expression relaxes.

“Oh, you must’ve forgotten. We’re heading to the shrine today, so you don’t have to wear that if you don’t want to. We should leave soon, though, just in case.”

Just in case what? Junhui wonders, but he heads back into Minghao’s room to change into more comfortable clothes. Minghao’s surprisingly fashionable, and his closet is filled with articles that wouldn’t look out of place on a spread in a fashion magazine for idols. He’s never worn Minghao’s normal clothes before, since he’s only gotten to wear his school uniform, so Junhui takes his sweet time, holding shirts and pants up to the light to see which would go better together.

Minghao’s mom gives him a once-over when he steps out in a black shirt and dark jeans, sniffing delicately. “It could be worse, I guess. At least it’s not that black and yellow thing you wore last time. Let’s go now, before it gets too congested on the streets.”

“Are we walking? To the shrine, I mean?”

Minghao’s mom fixes him with a bemused smile before she laughs. “Minghao, you’re so funny today, what’s gotten into you? I mean, if you want to walk, you can feel free, but I’m going to be driving. If you want to spend the next three hours walking, be my guest!”

Junhui decides not to, and the answering grin Minghao’s mom gives him tells him that it was a very wise choice. The drive to the shrine is a quiet one, and Junhui takes the time to look out at the streets of Anshan. The alleys are bustling with activity, with vendors hawking their wares and food, and Junhui loves it. The stalls are different from the ones that had been there the first time Junhui woke up in Anshan, which only means that there’s more to discover from here on out.

Seoul is nice, but it doesn’t have the same level of familiarity that he feels here— even though Shenzhen is nearly a seven hour flight and a twenty-eight hour drive away, even though Seoul is technically closer to Shenzhen than Anshan is, even though he doesn’t even _know_ anyone here, Junhui feels a strange sort of comfort whenever he wakes up and finds his legs tangled in the same thin cotton blanket.

The streets and buildings give way to countryside, then to forest, as they make their way out of the city. It’s when they reach a fenced-in area with other cars parked inside that Junhui and Minghao’s mom get out of the car, and Junhui takes a moment to snap a quick photo of the mountains he sees ahead.

The placard on the visitor information center says _Qianshan National Park_ , and Junhui’s about to take his— it’s Minghao’s, really, but he’s not bothering to keep track anymore— wallet out to pay for the tickets when Minghao’s mom shows the attendant a card. They’re let through without much fanfare at all, and Junhui finds himself having to quicken his pace in order to keep up with Minghao’s mom’s suddenly brisk steps.

“Where are we going?” Junhui asks, stepping over fallen branches and onto a worn path.

“They don’t let you take cars into the park, so we have to walk up to the top of the mountain.” Minghao’s mom looks over at him. “You haven’t been here ever since you were really small, though, so I don’t blame you.”

Junhui stares up at the path in front of them, and he mentally despairs at how steep and winding it looks. It’s going to take a while, and Junhui just hopes that his legs won’t end up being completely jellied by the time they get to the top.

“Chin up, Minghao,” Minghao’s mom laughs. “You look too sad to be hiking up a mountain with your favorite mom. Trust me, the sight’s going to all be worth it.”

“But why are we doing this on a weekday? I have school, you know.” Junhui’s secretly glad for the chance to see more of Anshan than just the same four walls of the classroom, but he’ll never voice that out loud. Instead, he tries to make himself sound as petulant as possible— after all, that’s what Minghao’s voice sounds like in his head.

Minghao’s mom pauses. “You’ll see in a bit.”

“In a bit” ends up being just under an hour later. Junhui’s legs practically feel like they’re about to fall off, and he’s _this close_  to booking a flight back to Seoul as fast as he can just so he can escape the near endless hike in front of him. Then, just as suddenly as they’d started on the incline, the woods around him give way to the clear blue skies above them.

There’s a shrine in front of them, its grey stone walls covered in crawling vines of ivy and blankets of moss. Minghao’s mother steps forward, placing her hand on the walls and staring up at the greenery.

“Is this what we came here for?” Junhui ventures, and Minghao’s mom grins at him, pushing away the curtains of ivy that had covered the entrance and gesturing at him to step inside.

“It’s been a long time since we last went here, so let’s clean up a little bit.”

The shrine is small, its rough stone walls seeming like they’re threatening to collapse in on Junhui at any moment. The shrine’s walls are covered in scrolls, the ink on them faded but still legible: some of the scrolls have paintings of the mountain landscape on them, while others have what look like poems brushed onto them. The shrine is completely empty, save for the scrolls and a raised platform jutting out in the middle of the space.

As Minghao’s mom busies herself with brushing off some of the dust that’s accumulated on the scrolls, Junhui steps closer to the platform, gingerly resting a hand on its surface. It’s not the platform itself Junhui is interested in, though— it’s the statue resting on it that’s caught Junhui’s attention. There’s a dragon and a phoenix curled around a large ball, and all of it is completely carved of jade.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” comes Minghao’s mom’s voice behind him, and Junhui very nearly jumps out of his skin.

“Yeah, it is.” It’s beautiful, there’s no other way to put it. It looks almost impossibly round and smooth, like it’ll break if Junhui as much as breathes on it. “What is this shrine for?”

“The world wasn’t always the way it is now, Minghao. Long ago, humans and animals lived in harmony with each other, coexisting in peace.” Minghao’s mom walks forward, enough so that she’s standing nearly shoulder to shoulder with Junhui. “Then coal mining became the main source of income here in Anshan and the skyscrapers stared to fill the sky, one by one, one after another. Everyone, in their desire to reach the heavens, forgot about what was here on earth.”

She sighs, a long and low sound. “That’s why we have this park— why we have this shrine. Sure, we wanted to preserve as much of the natural beauty and all of the animals and plants here as possible, but there was something else. We wanted to preserve our culture here. Of course, the shrine existed way before then, but it took on new meanings when everything changed. ”

“The two spiritual beings representing the emperor and the empress, made out of the embodiment of what we consider the five main virtues: courage, wisdom, modesty, justice, and compassion. I wanted you to come here with me today so I could show you the part of our past that so many have already forgotten. There’s no school today, anyway; did you forget? So don’t worry about missing class, you’re so studious all of a sudden.” She puts her hand on the dragon’s head, smoothing it over with her palm before moving on to the phoenix. “It’s really too bad we couldn’t make it in time for sunrise, and it’ll be too dark outside if we wait until sunset.”

“What happens at sunrise and sunset?” Junhui asks. He’s heard the entire spiel about preserving his culture and remembering his roots numerous times from his own parents, but it’s completely different this time. It feels more real, more impactful, somehow, when he’s standing in a shrine steeped in centuries of tradition rather than in a subway station in the middle of Seoul.

“See those slats in the roof?” She points upwards, and Junhui tilts his head up to look. Small rectangular slats line the perimeter of the roof, and once Junhui finishes following the path with his eyes, he looks back down at Minghao’s mom.

“Yeah, I see them. What do they have to do with sunrise and sunset, though?”

Minghao’s mom gives him a small grin. “Well, I suppose you’ll just have to find that out for yourself someday.”

 

_hey minghao,_

_it’s junhui here. i kind of figured out what was going on just now, too. i didn’t do much today, just went to qianshan national park. your mom showed me this nice shrine, but i kinda had to hike up a mountain for it. was it worth it? yeah, honestly. it’s been a while since i got to see nature like that. sorry if that was something you were looking forward to._

_since we both don’t really know how long it’s going to be like this, we should probably lay down some ground rules so we don’t end up messing each others’ lives up forever, yeah?_

_i’ll write down what i want you not to do in my body anymore, and feel free to do the same on my phone! if we’re going to be basically body roommates, we might as well make the best of it._

_things not to do:_

_1\. don’t dye my hair again, seriously, i’m so lucky that my parents didn’t hunt me down and make me re-dye it. if you dye my hair again i’ll dye yours pink! don’t think i won’t do it, because i’ve seen this super bright pink dye at the convenience store down the street, and i think you’d make a pretty great flower fairy. haha, just kidding. haha, not really._

_2\. don’t do weird things to my body, like wear weird clothes or dance weird things. i won’t be specifying what exactly the weird things i don’t want you to do are, but you should be able to guess!! i’ll come find you if you do weird things, xu minghao! keep in mind that i know your address now!_

_3\. sign up for things without telling me… why did you sign up for the dance festival? i totally trust that you’d be able to handle it, but argh, i haven’t danced in so long! i mean, i know that you have some sets that you want to do with soonyoung and the others, but i have no idea what it is! ugh. do i have to learn it all?_

_4\. don’t spend my money on frivolous things… i’m trying to save up enough money so that i can rescue a cat from our local shelter and have enough money to cover kitty litter and food and medical expenses. buying food is okay as long as it’s not at some five star restaurant. sorry, didn’t mean to get all serious there. i just love cats, that’s all._

_5\. my goal this year is to go the entire year without being written up by the homeroom teacher. or the social sciences teacher. or the english teacher. or the korean teacher. or the mathematics teacher. or the science teacher. or— or any of them, really, but especially the principal. i think he already has it out for me after i accidentally tipped over a bucket of water onto his new leather shoes._

_(in my defense, though, it wasn’t really my fault because soonyoung bumped into me first, and i didn’t even know the principal would be walking through the doorway! not my fault!)_

_things to do:_

_1\. go to class every day… please… i’m just trying to graduate here, and i know you’re a first year, but i’m a third year. i don’t know if this is going to last until examinations, but the exam for us korean high school students is next month in november, so i really have to study for that. i’m just seriously praying that we won’t switch on the day of the exam, since i can only take it once._

_2\. my little brother fengjun is going through puberty right now, so he’s kind of your typical angsty pre-teen. i’d appreciate it if, even if i’m not there and it’s you instead, you can talk to him for a little bit each day. just a few words will help, even if you don’t think they will._

_3\. be friends with my friends!! wonwoo and jihoon might not be the easiest to get along with at first, but trust me when i say they’re insanely good people. wonwoo is kind of weird sometimes, but he knows a lot, and jihoon is super talented. ask him if you can hear a song of his sometime. and soonyoung is just hilarious and a crazy talented dancer to boot, so i have no doubt that you guys would get along really well._

_4\. also, if you haven’t noticed yet, i usually sit next to wonwoo and soonyoung and jihoon at lunch. there are some others, but they’re underclassmen, so you don’t really have to worry about them unless you really love comedy acts. anyway, getting back to the point: we usually share our lunches, so if you want to or if you have time in the morning, you can cook something quick up to bring to school so you can share with them. sometimes, this kid named mingyu comes over, and he makes a really good kimbap, so be sure to try it if you can._

_5\. if you ever need to get up to pee during the middle of the night, you should put the toilet seat back down after you use it. fengjun uses that bathroom too, and when it’s really late, he doesn’t like to stand while he’s going, so he’ll just sit down as soon as he can. so obviously, that means that he’ll sit down even if the seat isn’t down. see where this is going? please try not to let my little brother fall into the toilet again._

_thanks, minghao! let’s try to make this a productive relationship._

_i’m counting on you._

_junhui._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're at the halfway point now! ty as always for reading! *_* also stream pinwheel stan seventeen etc etc


	5. your wish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> junhui most definitely doesn't think about minghao a lot. definitely.

“You seem so much happier nowadays,” Soonyoung remarks offhandedly during lunch, twirling a pencil between his index and middle fingers as he stares at Junhui. “Has the springtime of youth finally blossomed for you?”

Junhui stares at Soonyoung, a stray piece of rice dropping off of his lip and falling onto his math notebook. Then, a beat.

“ _What_?” Junhui splutters, spewing out the rest of his half-chewed rice onto Soonyoung’s shirt. He feels just a little bad about it when he sees the look of absolute dismay on Soonyoung’s face— he knows Soonyoung just washed this shirt yesterday, but he can’t bring himself to care, not really, when there are more pressing matters at hand. “What do you mean, springtime of youth?”

“He wants to know if you’re in love or not,” Jihoon says, plucking a tissue out of his bag and passing it to Soonyoung. “Are you?”

Junhui snorts. “Where would you get that idea?”

Soonyoung wipes the rice off of his shirt before balling it up and tossing it at Junhui. “You haven’t noticed? You’re acting so weird. Even Wonwoo’s noticed, and there’s usually nothing in his head except books.”

“You know what, this entire situation seems kinda familiar. It’s like we’ve had this exact same conversation before with another equally thick-headed guy,” Jihoon says, out of the blue, and Soonyoung laughs.

“Right? Junhui’s basically the way Wonwoo was last year, back when he fell in l-o-v-e. So, Junhui, since you’re being Mister Obvious right now, don’t you want to just come out and tell us who it is? Did you go down the forbidden path like Wonwoo did and find an underclassman? Or are you going for a university student?”

Junhui wrinkles his nose. “Kwon Soonyoung, did you hit your head during dance practice? Is that where you’re getting these crazy ideas from?”

“Wen Junhui, are you in love? You’re exhibiting all of the same symptoms that Jeon Wonwoo did. So tell us, who’s this special someone who’s getting you all worked up, hmm? Do we know this person?”

Junhui snorts. “Where would I even find someone to like? You have too high of an opinion of me, all I do these days is—”

He cuts himself off. There is someone he’s been thinking about lately— the only problem is, that person is a scrawny dancer who lives two countries away. Besides, Junhui doesn’t even like him. The most he can muster for Minghao on a good day is mild tolerance, especially if he hears that Minghao’s been nice to Fengjun while in Junhui’s body. There’s no way it’s love, or even like. It’s kind of fun having Minghao around, though, so Junhui files his status firmly in the “friend” category.

He realizes, then, that he’s been staring off into space for too long and Soonyoung’s started to catch on. With a rapidly sinking heart, Junhui watches as Soonyoung recovers some of the glint in his eye that had left when Junhui spat up rice onto his shirt. “Oooh, you’re thinking about this person now~ who is it! Tell us! Tell us!”

“There’s no one,” Junhui says easily and at least somewhat truthfully. Minghao’s special to him, but probably not in the way that Soonyoung is anticipating. “Where is Wonwoo, anyway?”

“On the roof as always, lucky asshole. Hey, don’t change the subject, though, wen Junhui. Have we met this person? Are we going to?” Soonyoung practically leans his entire body over the desk to stick his face in front of Junhui’s, and Junhui has to lean back in his chair so that Soonyoung doesn’t end up colliding with him. “I want to meet your mystery person!”

 _You already have_ , Junhui thinks as the bell rings and Soonyoung gets up from his seat, throwing Junhui one last dirty look and a promise of “I’ll get to the bottom of this someday!” _You’ve met him so many times already. The thing is, he was just in my body and you didn’t even know it._

 

It’s easy to fall into a routine after that. Minghao and Junhui switch bodies around once every two or three days, although there are times where the switches don’t come for longer than that. It happens without warning, and it happens seemingly randomly. Junhui’s tried staying awake some nights to try to see if they’ll switch even if he stays up the entire night, but he’ll inevitably find his eyelids drooping, and the next thing he knows, he’s in Anshan. There seems to be no end to the switching, and while at first he’d been eager for it to end, he soon learns to just let it happen.

He’s grown to love Minghao’s life as much as he loves his own, grown to love Minghao’s family as much as he loves his own. He learns what makes Minghao’s friends laugh and what makes Minghao’s mother smile and what makes Minghao’s father hold in a chuckle. It’s too easy to slip in and out of Minghao’s existence, and he can tell that Minghao feels the same way.

Sometimes, Minghao spends too much money on a flashy jacket that Junhui finds stashed in his closet, the bright reds and yellows standing out amidst the blacks and the greys and the whites. So clearly, the only way for Junhui to get back at him is to take Minghao’s wallet on a trip to downtown Anshan, and Junhui makes sure to take pictures of every single dish he buys from the food stalls.

 _Stop wasting my money on useless clothes!!_  Junhui writes into Minghao’s notebook, drawing cats with angry faces and bulging forehead veins in the margins. _Seriously!! I’m not made of money, you freeloader!!_

 _Stop wasting my money on street food!_ Junhui sees in his notes the next time he’s back in his body. Junhui feels his eye twitch. _You’re going to make me fat, you asshole!_

 _Jerk_ , Junhui writes onto Minghao’s cheek with a black marker— it’s washable, though, he checked just to make sure it wouldn’t be written on him forever— the next time he switches over.

Junhui wakes up to find _idiot_ written on his own cheek, and when he gets to school, his efforts to scrub the marker off prove to be completely futile, Soonyoung nearly falls onto the floor, clutching his stomach and doubling up in laughter.

“Holy shit, Wen Junhui, did you decide to give yourself an at-home tattoo? What does that say? Is that _egg_ in Chinese? Dude, I recognize it from all the times I made you order for us at the Chinese places down in Myeongdong,” Soonyoung gasps out.

“No, you dumbass, it says ‘idiot.’ It’s just written with the word for egg.”

“Oh.” Soonyoung straightens up, cocking his head to the side, with an unusually placid expression on his face. “Damn, you really should’ve just let me believe it said egg instead of letting us all know you wrote _idiot_ , of all things, on your own face.”

“Piss off,” Junhui mutters under his breath, and Soonyoung grins widely before the bell chimes, signaling the start of class. He scampers off, but not before throwing a last, “Bye, eggy!” at Junhui. It’s not worth it to try to explain to Soonyoung that it wasn’t really him who wrote on his own face, since if he does, he’ll probably be the butt of all of Soonyoung’s jokes for the rest of forever.

Junhui spends the rest of the day alternating between stewing in his own thoughts and letting his mind wander. More and more, he finds himself thinking about the view from the top of a lush green mountain, about the taste of fish congee, about the feel of a worn and thin blanket underneath his palms. Then, like a lightning bolt striking the earth, his thoughts shift.

Against his will, he starts wondering how Minghao’s doing today— if Minghao’s gotten up on time today, if Minghao’s out of bed yet, if Minghao’s had breakfast, if Minghao’s at school and taking notes responsibly. He feels an impossible sort of fondness for the other boy that only comes with having, quite literally, walked up a mountain and more in his shoes, and he doesn’t know if he likes it at all.

 

Minghao is, apparently, trying to audition for an entertainment company in Korea. Everything clicks into place— why Minghao had known a little bit of Korean, why Minghao had been practicing writing in his notebook, why Minghao had expressed any desire to learn more about the culture at all. Junhui only figures this out because he wakes up in Anshan bright and early one Saturday morning, and when he checks the notebook on instinct, he sees, scrawled in black marker, _Audition in three weeks!!!! Don’t miss it!!!!! Practice hard!!!!!!!!!_

Junhui isn’t sure if Minghao is talking to Junhui or to himself, but he thinks that he should do Minghao just one favor and practice for him today. There’s an audio file on Minghao’s phone that’s saved as _very important audition song don’t forget.mp3_ , so he doesn’t even hesitate before pressing play. It’s a good song, Junhui admits, tapping out the beat onto his knee with his fingers. Minghao has good taste.

The dance comes to him easily, like muscle memory, and Junhui finds himself stepping through positions he’d never even known he was capable of. Minghao must’ve worked himself to the bone practicing this dance if his body remembers every step, every kick, every pose. Junhui runs through the dance until the sun sets, and when the song ends for the hundredth time, he practically collapses onto the mattress, his cotton t-shirt soaked through with sweat.

“What are you doing, Junhui?” he mumbles to himself, staring at the ceiling. The mattress is cool against his heated skin, and he turns his face to the side, pressing his cheek into the sheets and closing his eyes. “Do you really have time for this?”

There’s no response. Obviously, Junhui thinks, ceilings can’t talk, but apparently, two boys can switch bodies. The world makes absolutely zero sense. Suddenly exhausted, Junhui drags himself across the floor to reach the notebook Minghao had been practicing Korean in.

_hi minghao, today i helped you practice your dance for probably five entire hours straight. aren’t i such a good friend? you must’ve practiced this a lot, your body totally just moved on instinct when i tried. whoa. you’ve got some serious talent and dedication, xu minghao. if only you could put that to your schoolwork… just kidding! not really, though, i think your teachers like you a lot more when i’m in your body._

_anyway, i’m gonna give you some tips on surviving in seoul, so listen up close, yeah? unless you feel like getting lost, then i’d recommend not getting a map in case your phone dies. which it will, since i know you’re going to take photos everywhere and use up your battery in an hour, so you better get a map. oh, get a subway card, too, if you don’t feel like spending way too much money on taxi fees. it’s super convenient, and you can get basically anywhere if you have it!_

_it’ll be good to brush up on some korean, like basic phrases or how to read some of the more complicated characters, but a lot of the subway line names are gonna be in hanja, so at least you can read the chinese characters. also, try not to look like too much of a tourist and try to act like you belong. i don’t know how possible that’s going to be for you, but maybe being in my body is going to help you in the long run._

_hmm, is that it…? let me think if i have anything else to say? maybe i’ll tell you more next time._

Satisfied, Junhui puts the pen down. He’s done a good enough deed today for Minghao, from practicing his dance for him to giving him tips for his Seoul adventure.

 

Minghao ends up being funnier than Junhui had given him credit for. He has a deadpan sense of humor that reminds him, rather strangely, of Wonwoo’s, and Junhui thinks that if Wonwoo and Minghao ever met up, there would be actual hell on earth for him. No matter, though, since Minghao is actually a decent guy, despite all of his past crimes like dyeing Junhui’s hair blond. After all, Minghao tries, vainly, to fix up Junhui’s conversational skills, and Junhui tries to cure Minghao’s sense of fashion in return.

 _It’s kind of funny_ , Junhui writes in Minghao’s notebook one day. _I had a friend named Minghao back when I lived in Shenzhen, too. It was such a shock when I woke up in your house the first time and your mom called me by your name. I thought I was totally dreaming for real._

A few days later, Junhui finds, written in his notes: _Really? Hey, at least you’re not the one who woke up in a totally different country. Man, good thing your parents still speak Mandarin to you at home, or otherwise I’d have been completely screwed. Hey, that other Minghao, though— I’m the better one, right? Aren’t I cuter? More good-looking? Super handsome? Haha, just kidding. Maybe you can meet up with him someday. That’d be a nice way to go back to your roots or something._

 _Yeah right, in your dreams, Xu Minghao. Like I’d choose you over my ultra super best friend Minghao. It’s way too early for you to be challenging his position as my favorite Chinese Minghao ever,_ Junhui scribbles into Minghao’s notebook, the marker nearly flying off of the pages. _Give it another eight years and then we’ll talk, okay?_

 

It’s lunchtime, which means Junhui has his phone out in a desperate attempt to try to ignore Soonyoung doing his best imitation of a hamster with its cheeks full of sunflower seeds. He’s just idly checking his notes and seeing what Minghao’s been doing lately, who’s clearly happy that Junhui’s been helping him practice, though, writing that _I’m glad you’re finally making yourself useful instead of just eating all of Anshan’s street food all day._

 _Oh, by the way, it’s my birthday in a few weeks_ , Junhui reads, and he almost drops his phone on the table. Jihoon looks over.

“Slippery hands? Or are you just clumsy?” Jihoon asks mildly, and Junhui blows him a juvenile raspberry.

“None of your business,” Junhui retorts before going back to reading what Minghao’s written.

_i just thought you might like to know. it’s on the seventh of november. if you end up spending my birthday in my body, i just want to know that you’re a huge jerk, but have fun and eat all the cake you can for me. i think i’ll be heading over to seoul for my birthday since the audition is the day before, so let’s try to meet up maybe?? come pick me up at the seoul station and show me good places to get cool clothes and eat good food!! but get ready, since i want to punch you in the face for putting so much junk food in my body!! i told you not to eat so many egg rolls and fried dough sticks!!_

Junhui snorts, but there’s a smile curving at the edge of his lips. The next time he and Minghao switch, he’ll be sure to help Minghao out and plan out his trip so they can meet up.

 

A week later, Junhui still hasn’t woken up in Anshan, and even though this is the natural course of events, even though this is the natural course of life itself, he can’t help but wonder why. It seems so abrupt, so sudden, like the threads of their relationship have just been severed.

Why is it that just as they’ve become friends, the world has to take the only way he has of reaching Minghao from him?

Junhui flops backwards onto his bed and stares up at his phone before he pulls up the phone app. He hesitates for just a bit before he punches in Minghao’s number— he’d taken a peek at it on Minghao’s own phone one day— _just in case_ , he’d told himself at the time. Now, more than ever, those digits seem more important than ever.

He’s just going to call to make sure Minghao hasn’t fallen off the face of the earth or anything, Junhui tells himself. This isn’t creepy at all. Of course not.

He holds his breath as the call goes through, the only sound in the room the consistent _beep beep beep_. Then, just when he’s about to hang up, Junhui hears a voice, and he’s about to jump in joy and ask Minghao just why they haven’t switched places recently when he realizes what exactly he’s hearing.

“Sorry, the number you have called is not available right now. Please hang up and try again.”

“Maybe he’s busy?” Junhui muses aloud, hanging up and throwing his phone back down onto the bed. He sighs loudly before he rolls onto his side. “Stop acting like a stupid little boy, Wen Junhui. Snap out of it. Not switching bodies is better off for you, anyway, it’s not like you even really liked it in the first place.”

Maybe, he thinks, if he repeats the words enough times, he’ll start to believe them himself.

 

Junhui waits and waits and waits, and, slowly and agonizingly, the days he spends staring out the window turn to weeks he spends drumming his fingers in a staccato rhythm against his desk. But still, nothing happens.

They don’t switch again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all already know what's happening 
> 
> jk haha
> 
> ;--)) 
> 
> i've come to realize that i use this "someone disappears and the other person has to figure out why" trope a lot .. oops i love it tho pining is my #ish anyway!!! tyy for reading as always :''')))))


	6. your home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> junhui visits anshan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the content warning for this chapter counts as a spoiler i guess so if you want to know before reading, please go to the end notes!

Junhui’s parents get a call from his grandmother one day, completely out of the blue. A close family friend is getting married, she says, and she wants Junhui and his family to come along. He recognizes it for what it is: a chance for Junhui’s family to come back to Shenzhen, and they take it instantly, booking tickets as soon as they hang up the phone.

Another two weeks passes by without Junhui waking up in Anshan, and suddenly, the date of his cousin’s wedding is closer than ever. He texts Wonwoo on the way to the airport, his knees pressed against his chest to make room for all of the luggage in the back of their van. Fengjun is next to him, his head lolling onto Junhui’s shoulder as he takes an afternoon nap, and Junhui pauses from his typing to run a careful hand through Fengjun’s hair.

 _14:28 junjunjun: i’m going to the airport soon don’t miss me too much_  
_14:28 jeonha: lol as if_  
_14:28 jeonha: just stay there_  
_14:28 junjunjun: :(_  
_14:29 junjunjun: wow_  
_14:29 jeonha: jk have a safe flight have fun don’t drink too much_  
_14:29 jeonha: be sure to rest up tho_  
_14:29 jeonha: you’ve been feeling off for a while_  
_14:30 junjunjun: yeah_  
_14:30 junjunjun: i will_  
_14:31 junjunjun: ty jeoneonu u have a heart of gold_  
_14:31 jeonha: can you not get all sappy on me now i’m in cram school_  
_14:31 jeonha: it’ll ruin my rep if i cry during a lecture on differential equations_  
_14:32 junjunjun: wow study hard my prickly marshmallow_  
_14:32 jeonha: call me that one more time and i’ll leak all your baby pics_  
_14:32 jeonha: you know the ones i’m talking about i know you do_  
_14:32 junjunjun: wow haha the connection’s cutting off we’re in a tunnel_  
_14:32 junjunjun: bye_

Junhui puts his phone back into his pocket, staring out of the window and sighing. He’s pretty sure that Wonwoo’s right: he really does need to take some time off to relax. After all, the entire situation with Minghao shook him up more than he’d expected, and he knows that all of his friends have caught on by now even though he hasn’t told them any of the specifics.

He’s glad, though. As paradoxical as it probably seems, having Minghao there to split his weeks with only helped him get closer with his friends. He can see himself the way his friends probably see him, and he’s not as self-conscious about all of the individual facets of his personality as he was before. Minghao, with his take-no-prisoners attitude and penchant of turning Junhui’s closet upside down, is the one who’s helped Junhui be comfortable in his own skin again.

“We’re here,” comes Junhui’s father’s voice from the driver’s seat, and Junhui jerks upright. “Can you wake your brother up? We have to go check in.”

Junhui nudges Fengjun awake, grinning a little as his brother rubs sleepily at his eyes. When Fengjun stumbles after stepping out of the car, Junhui is there to catch him, his arms outstretched and waiting. He can only hope that he’ll be able to do the same to Minghao.

 

Shenzhen is the same as he’d remembered. The people, the sights, the sounds, everything is as it was when he stepped onto the plane so many years ago. Junhui gets to recharge and catch up on everything that’s gone on in his family’s lives, but he still feels an itch underneath his skin. Even though he’s in Shenzhen, which is everything the him of before would’ve wanted, he’s still uneasy, like he’s still looking for something—

And he’s a bit regretful that it’s taken him so long to realize, but now, he knows exactly what that something is.

 

It’s easy enough to escape his family after the wedding is over. He packs just a small bag with some clothes and waves goodbye to his family at the airport. He’d booked a separate ticket home a month ago, one that would let him stop by Anshan on the way back. He wants to meet up with Minghao, after all, and thank him for all of the fashion advice he’s received, for all the jokes that Soonyoung’s learned from him, for all of the blond and grey hairs he’s grown as a result of Minghao’s antics.

His parents have pretty much already given up on figuring out why he does the things he does— they let Junhui go with deep sighs and shakes of their heads when he says he’s just visiting a friend.

“Do you have all your documents for getting back to Korea, though? Your passport?” His dad asks, and Junhui nods. They’re in his backpack, and he’s securely tied the fasteners around his chest. “Okay, good.”

“Call us when you get to Anshan, okay? And bring back some souvenirs, I heard their jade bracelets are really pretty!” His mom hugs him for longer than Junhui thinks is really necessary, her arms wrapping around him.

“ _Mom_ ,” Junhui half-whines as he nudges her away. “I’ll only be a day behind. I’ll be back before you know it.”

“I just worry about you,” she says, quiet and soft, and she reaches forward to brush a stray lock of hair back behind Junhui’s ear. “Even if it’s for a day, I’ll still miss you so much.”

“Okay, mom,” Junhui says, his throat tight and his eyes itchy. He rushes forward to hug her again, breathing in the smell of her clean laundry and muted floral perfumes. “I’ll see you the day after tomorrow.”

 

_“Junhui, it’s me. Don’t you remember me?”_

 

The flight takes an entire seven hours. Junhui wakes with a start as the stewardess announces their descent— he’s been having these strange dreams recently where he can’t remember anything about them after he wakes up. All he can really feel, all that he can really remember, is a feeling of emptiness in his chest.

His stomach grumbles, and he winces. Or maybe he’s just hungry.

He zips out of the airport as soon as he can, grabbing his backpack from underneath the seat in front of him and leaving, vowing to get to Minghao’s neighborhood quickly so he can grab Minghao and introduce himself and drag him out to get some dinner. He hails a cab to take him to the neighborhood Minghao lives in, and he watches the familiar scenery pass by in a blur around him.

There are butterflies in his stomach— he can’t help it, not when he feels like he’s meeting someone who’s a complete stranger and a close friend at the same time. The ride is a short one, and Junhui finds his leg shaking even more erratically the closer they get. He’s nervous— what if Minghao ends up being totally different from the Minghao who had dyed his hair blond and bought him new clothes?

Junhui shakes his head, slapping his cheeks as if it’ll help dispel some of the thoughts. He doesn’t have time for things like these, not when his flight back to Seoul leaves tomorrow in the afternoon. He’s here to meet Minghao, and he’s going to meet Minghao, no matter how long it takes or how awkward it’s going to be.

The ride is a short one, and Junhui is a little surprised at how close the neighborhood seems to be from the airport. He pays the driver, intentionally keeping his eyes away from the window. He wants this first glance to be a surprise, after all.

“Are you sure this is the right place?” the driver asks, and Junhui represses a smile, wondering if the driver can tell if it’s his first time here. He’s just looking out for Junhui.

“Yeah, I’m sure. Thank you, though.” Junhui gathers his scant belongings and ducks out of the car, keeping his back turned to the street Minghao lives on. He watches the taxi speed away, and Junhui breathes in and out, feeling the tension seep out of his bones. After three weeks, he’s back in Anshan, and this time, it’s in his own body.

Junhui turns to see how much the neighborhood’s changed in three weeks, a wide grin on his face—

And then he feels his blood turn to ice.

The neighborhood is gone. The street stalls, the fabric shops, everything— it’s all gone, and all that remains are empty patches of land. The street is cordoned off with yellow tape, and no matter how much Junhui blinks, the view in front of him doesn’t change. He rubs his eyes, willing away the tears that are starting to form, and he swallows.

Minghao’s neighborhood is completely destroyed.

 

There’s a plaque on the ground in front of the tape. It reads _in loving memory of those who lived here_ , and Junhui knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that they’re talking about Minghao, his family, and all of his neighbors. He doesn’t have any way of confirming it, but that would make sense. It would explain why he hasn’t switched with Minghao at all. He stands there until his legs grow numb and passersby start taking notice of him.

One of them, an elderly woman, comes up to Junhui and taps him on the arm. “Young man, is something wrong?”

“Ah— auntie. Hello... I’m alright, thank you,” he lies, blinking rapidly. This woman looks similar to the one he’d met on his first day in Anshan, the one he’d asked for directions to the high school. He wonders if they’re related, if the woman he’d asked for help is gone now, too. “Do you know what happened here?”

The woman goes quiet, and Junhui fears, for a split second, that he’s stepped on a land mine of emotions. Then she looks up at Junhui, and her face is impossibly older than it had been just a second earlier, her forehead creased with wrinkles and her eyes brimming with emotion.

“It was a year ago. We didn’t know— none of us living here knew— that we lived on top of an abandoned coal mine. It had been closed decades ago, but it was never sealed up. Early one morning, a spark must have been lit and thrown into the opening of the abandoned mine, because all we could hear and see were explosions underground. It shook up the entire neighborhood, and we thought it was over once the explosions stopped.”

The woman pauses.

“It wasn’t over. The abandoned mine— it collapsed in on itself, and it took a lot of the houses on that street down with it. All of the families, all of the parents and children— they were all gone and there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it. Once, it used to be lively and cheerful around there. Now, it’s silent, like a graveyard.”

Junhui’s head is spinning, but then something catches his ear. “You said this happened a year ago?”

The woman nods again. “Yes, I remember it like it happened just recently. I think that it’ll be a year and a month since it happened soon. Ah, it’s late. I have to get home to my grandchildren, but if there is anything else you want to know about, the public library down the main street has newspaper articles you can look at if you want to. Take care of yourself, young man.”

Junhui bows to her, watching her leave, but his brain isn’t really there. His mind is spinning, since it just doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense. He’d been in this exact neighborhood three weeks ago, and he’d even gone to Minghao’s school for him and taken dutiful and diligent notes. How could an accident that destroyed the entire neighborhood have happened a year ago?

Unless—

Unless Junhui had gone back in time to a year ago, back before the explosions occurred. He slaps his own face after he thinks of that, but once he’s gotten the idea floating around in his brain, he can’t let it go. It’s already weird enough that he’d been switching bodies with someone in china, and if he’s being honest with himself, it’s not too much of a stretch to think that he could have exchanged timelines with Minghao as well.

Now that he thinks about it, there had been some times when their dates hadn’t aligned, like when Junhui had no school during the weekend, then he’d had class at Minghao’s place during the weekday, then he’d had no school again when he woke up. He’d chalked it up to strange school systems in Anshan, but now, he realizes that it was probably just different dates occurring on different days of the week.

Junhui stops, turning his attention to the sky above him. Here he is, in a foreign country, with just the clothes on his back and some documents in his backpack, a year too late to meet a friend with absolutely nothing that could help him figure out what happened.

It hits him. Maybe there’s something in the notes that Minghao had saved onto his phone that could help him out. Junhui digs through his pockets for his phone, and once he has it in his hands, he goes straight for the notes app, expecting to see Minghao’s entries filled with his typical sarcasm and dry humor.

Instead, he sees nothing. There’s nothing there except for the notes that Junhui definitively knows he was the author of, and it’s as if all traces of Minghao have been wiped from Junhui’s life. He scrolls through his notes almost frantically, hoping that _something’s_  still there, but he reaches the very end of his notes, and there’s no long-winded message apologizing for dyeing Junhui’s hair blond.

He reaches up to touch his hair. It’s still blond— he hadn’t had the heart to dye it back after he got permission from the school to keep it like that. That, at least, is one reminder that Minghao was there with him, was there _as_  him and living out his life.

There’s something else, too. Junhui rubs idly at the jade bracelet encircling his wrist. He doesn’t remember from where he got it. He remembers waking up with it one day, but other than that, his memories regarding where he got the bracelet from are unclear. Somehow, he feels like this, too, is connected to Minghao, and as he raises his head and decides to make his way to the library, he keeps a steady grip on the bracelet.

It calms him as he asks the attendant about news relating to the neighborhood explosions, and it settles his nerves when he flips through the articles. He comes to a list, and he doesn’t even need to read the title to know what he’ll find there.

_Xu Minghao, aged 16._

Junhui lets out a long and shuddering breath. He sees the names of Minghao’s parents there, too, as well as the names of some of Minghao’s classmates from school. That makes sense, since the explosions had occurred early in the morning before anyone would have left for school or work. Junhui’s chest tightens. These names aren’t just names to him anymore— they’re real people who had helped Junhui out with Minghao’s homework and people who showed him the way to school the first day.

Junhui flips the page as gingerly as he would a historical artifact. Photographs adorn the pages, black and white faces staring out at Junhui, forever frozen in time. Junhui’s gaze goes directly to one at the bottom left corner. There’s a group of boys with their arms around each other’s shoulders, grinning into the camera. From the uniforms, this was probably a yearbook photo of some sort, but Junhui can recognize the boy in the middle almost instantly.

It’s Minghao.

From the light-colored hair to the piercings in his ears, he looks the same as Junhui had remembered, if just a little younger. Junhui reaches out to brush his fingertips over the photo, like doing so is going to bring him solace. It does, in a way, give him closure. No matter how crazy and wild his entire experience with Minghao has been, it’s comforting to know that he doesn’t have to worry about randomly waking up in another person’s bed anymore.

But underneath those small tendrils of comforting feelings is an entire sea of unhappiness. It’s not fair that Minghao doesn’t get to live out his life— it’s not fair that Minghao doesn’t get to know whether or not he’s been selected by the company he auditioned for or to grow old and wrinkly and have a family. It’s frustrating, and Junhui almost feels like cursing fate itself for doing this to them. What was the point of bringing them together as friends only to so cruelly rip them apart?

Junhui presses the heels of his palms against his closed eyes to tamp down whatever tears are threatening to fall before he looks down at the photograph again. Suddenly, something else catches his eye: there’s a jade bracelet on Minghao’s wrist. Junhui lifts his own wrist to eye level, and his eyes widen.

The patterning on the bracelets looks to be the exact same, meaning that this bracelet is, somehow, Minghao’s.

Junhui breathes out unsteadily, his heart and mind both racing with the realization that he has something of Minghao’s with him that he needs to return. He’s going to bring Minghao back. He has no idea how, but he’s going to, even if it’s the last thing he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: character death (but it's ok!!! trust me it's going to be fine i would never not give them a happy end)
> 
> thanks for reading so far :'')


	7. your song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> junhui takes a chance.

The trek up to the shrine in Qianshan is as grueling as Junhui so vividly remembers it being. It’s even worse in the afternoon, when the fading light makes it hard to see where exactly he’s stepping, and he nearly trips over his own feet a few times. He makes it to the top, though, and he spares just a second to look around at the shrine.

Yeah, it’s as tiny and cramped as it was the first time he was here. Junhui looks up at the slats in the ceiling letting in scant amounts of light, it’s then that he notices that the statue of the dragon and phoenix is _shining_. Junhui looks back up at the ceiling, suddenly acutely aware that it’s almost sunset. This must have been what Minghao’s mom wanted them to see when they went up to the shrine together, but Junhui frowns. This isn’t going to help him save Minghao.

Still, he takes a step closer to the statue to get a closer look, and when he does, his foot catches on a slippery patch of stone. He remembers falling forward and bracing himself for the impact, but it doesn’t help much, because he can see the edges of his vision fading to black. Junhui sees his life flash before him, his entire eighteen years compressed into the blink of an eye.

His last thought before everything becomes nothingness is _sorry, mom, I couldn’t keep my promise to come home to you._

 

When Junhui feels the first rays of morning sunlight hit his face, he screws his eyes tightly shut. He almost doesn’t even want to face the reality of what he’s just discovered. Something’s weird, though. The fabric underneath his fingertips feels thin and light, unlike that of his bed at home, and Junhui feels around the bed until his hands hit a notebook. A very, very familiar notebook.

Junhui’s eyelids fly open. He’s in Minghao’s bedroom again. The mattress, the walls, the ceiling, the window— everything is exactly as he remembers it being the last time he was here. The memories from yesterday come flooding back to him all at once, and he sits straight up in bed.

This can’t be happening.

He’d seen it unfold before him, seen all of the destruction and all of the emptiness, seen the wasteland that this neighborhood became.

But he’s here.

His hands tighten in the sheets, and he feels the familiar pinprick of tears behind his eyes. This makes absolutely zero sense, but he isn’t about to question it when he has a neighborhood to save. But first—

“Minghao! Come downstairs and eat breakfast before it gets cold! If you don’t come down and eat it, I’m not making you anything at all!”

As if on cue, his stomach grumbles. He still has to feed himself before trying to save the neighborhood, and it’s with an eager anticipation of fish congee building in his veins that he heads to the kitchen. Minghao’s mother is standing there in the kitchen, ladling a bowl of congee for herself and one for him.

“You’re up, sleepyhead.”

Junhui feels emotion bubbling up in his chest. Over the weeks, he’s grown to care of her, to think of her as a member of his own family. She’d made him breakfast and dinner for so many days that Junhui remembers his knees buckling when he’d scanned the list with Minghao’s name and found hers there as well. His legs are moving almost automatically, and he’s wrapping his arms around Minghao’s mom in a hug before he can stop himself.

“Thanks for the food,” he chirps, stepping backwards and grinning at the bemused expression on her face. He takes the bowl of congee and scarfs it down before he wipes his lips with a napkin. “There’s something I have to talk to you about.”

Minghao’s mom looks up from her bowl. Wwhat is it?”

“You have to leave this neighborhood for tonight. You have to tell everyone you can that they have to get out of this neighborhood before tomorrow morning, okay? Can you help me do that?”

Her eyebrows rise all the way up to her hairline. “Why?”

“I—” Junhui stills. He can’t tell her _oh, I’m actually from the future, and guess what? I’m not your son, either! I’ve been switching bodies with him every so often, but don’t worry, I’m not crazy!_ , can he? “I heard about it at school. There’s going to be an explosion in the coal mine underground sometime soon, and people say that it has a strong likelihood of becoming a sinkhole, too.”

Minghao’s mom pauses, looking at him for a moment before she shrugs. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Junhui hadn’t expected it to be this easy. “You’re okay with this?”

She nods. “It’s been a while since i got to spend the night over at some friends’ places. I’ll talk to your dad once he gets back from work, and we’ll see if we can figure something out for the night, okay?”

“I think— I think you’d have to stay away for at least the day,” Junhui ventures, and he shrinks back in his seat when Minghao’s mom levels a stern gaze at him.

“Really? And how do you know this?”

“I just… do. Please, just take dad and go somewhere other than here tonight. Can you help me convince the rest of the neighborhood? I can’t do this on my own, and it’s a Saturday, so everyone’s going to be sleeping in tomorrow on Sunday.” Junhui looks down at his hands, at the jade bracelet encircling his wrist. He’s been given a mission to complete, and he’s going to follow through with it. He looks back up at her, feeling a sort of steely determination that he hasn’t felt before. “Please.”

Minghao’s mom holds his gaze before she sighs. “I should’ve known you were going to grow up too fast, Minghao.” She grins at him, reaching over the table so she can put her hand above Junhui’s. “I trust you.”

 

No one believes Junhui. He runs around the neighborhood the entire day, knocking on the residents’ doors and pleading with them to leave. The last neighbor had only looked at him with pity in her eyes and murmured under her breath, “The Xu boy must have finally cracked from all that pressure he put himself under. That poor boy…” before closing the door on him.

Junhui wants to scream in frustration. He’s just trying to _save them_  but none of them are listening to him. There are so many lives here that don’t deserve to be destroyed due to events like these— it’s just not fair. He knows that at least Minghao’s parents will believe him, but it’s getting late in the afternoon now, and he leans back against the wall of Minghao’s own house. He stares up at the rapidly darkening sky, and he wonders.

If Minghao were here, would he be able to convince them all to leave and to save themselves?

Junhui blinks, an idea starting to form in his brain. Minghao’s mother had said that sunrise and sunset were when strange things happened, after all. He isn’t even done coming up with his plan before he’s grabbing a bicycle from the neighbor’s bike rack and speeding away on it. This way, he should be able to make it to the shrine on top of Qianshan by sunset.

 

Junhui makes it, but barely. There are scratches and bruises up and down his arms and legs from when he’d fallen on the trails, and he’s sure that Minghao’s muscles will be sore the next morning if— when he wakes up. He’s sure of it.

If he’d managed to switch bodies with Minghao by coming to the shrine last night at sunset, he should be able to switch back by doing the same thing. He doesn’t know what it is about this place that has these properties, but Junhui is suddenly so, so grateful for it. He’s had the chance to have so many incredible experiences here, to meet so many amazing people, and he’s not about to let the neighborhood vanish in the blink of an eye.

Junhui steps through the low door of the shrine, looking around once he’s inside. Everything is in the same place as it was when he last visited on his own, the statue of the dragon and the phoenix standing in the middle of the shrine. Except this time, it’s not glowing, and Junhui looks up at the ceiling. It’s not sunset yet. He has to wait.

It occurs to him, dimly, that this might have been a stupid idea. Of all of the ideas he’s ever had, of all of the dumb ideas he’s ever thrown out, this has to be the most ridiculous and the most insane of them all, but he’s throwing all of his chips in. It’s all or nothing now.

There’s so much that Junhui has to do, so much that he hasn’t done. He wants to graduate with Wonwoo, wants to go to noraebang with Jihoon, wants to dance with Soonyoung. He wants to meet Minghao, to compliment him on his fashion taste, to give him shit for dyeing his hair blond, to thank him for being strong enough to follow his dreams. He can’t let it all end here.

Then, as the last rays of the sun dip below the horizon, Junhui feels it— an almost imperceptible shifting of the air around him, and he knows that something has changed.

“Minghao?” He ventures warily, then repeats it again with more force. “Minghao, are you there?”

He hears it. Softly, at first, then louder, like a building crescendo of sound. “Junhui! Junhui, is that you?”

Junhui’s heart catches in his throat, and his knees nearly buckle from under him. He stumbles around the shrine, blindly grasping at the air as if he can pull Minghao into existence. “Minghao! Holy shit, it’s actually you! Oh, hey, your voice is different than i thought it would be. It sounds so much different when I’m talking in it.”

“Junhui, can you stop talking? For one second? Where are you?”

“I’m right here!” Junhui calls out, and as he’s walking around the room, he slips again, the soles of his feet catching on that same slippery brick. This time, though, he catches himself, grabbing onto the brightly glowing jade statue.

Somewhere far off, a bell rings, and Junhui stands up.

“Hey, Minghao,” Junhui says. He’s in his own body now, in the same clothes that he’d worn to visit Anshan. “Long time no see.”

“Junhui,” Minghao breathes out, and it’s him, it’s really him standing before Junhui on the other side of the statue. He’s even cuter in person than he looks in the mirror, all long legs and wide eyes and tufted hair. Junhui drops his hands from the statue, moving to cross the space between them as Minghao speaks up again. “It’s you.”

“Wait, you—! You dyed my hair blond, and you spent all of my money on clothes, you jerk!” Junhui blurts out, stabbing a finger into Minghao’s chest, and he watches as color rises in Minghao’s face. “You were the one who signed up for the dance festival with my name and skipped class to dance! You— you did so many unnecessary things to my life! So many problems!”

“Hey, you were the one who emptied my wallet buying street food. Also, consider my helping you out with organizing your closet a favor. Serves you right for having such shit taste in fashion,” Minghao bites back. “Who even thinks of matching the same things you do? Colorblind monkeys? Your room isn’t even that dark, but do you dress yourself with your eyes closed?”

“You’re so—” Junhui huffs, then he turns his head to the side. The air in the shrine is suddenly heavy with the memories of centuries past. There’s a weight on his wrist, and when he looks down, he realizes that he still has Minghao’s jade bracelet. Minghao’s wrist is empty— when did he ever give Junhui his bracelet?

“This is yours, I think,” Junhui says, slipping the bracelet off of his wrist and handing it over to Minghao. “why do i have it?”

“I visited you once,” Minghao says, his eyes large and clear. He slips the bracelet back on his own wrist before he cocks his head to the side. “I visited you in Seoul when I had my audition. You don’t remember?”

“No! You were one entire year behind me, I didn’t know you at all!” Junhui splutters, his lips pressing into a thin line soon after. “Why did you come to see me when I didn’t even know you?”

“I didn’t know either, so sue me.” Minghao crosses his arms over his chest. “I realized it then, though. Your hair was black, and I thought to myself that you couldn’t have possibly dyed it back already. I gave you my bracelet, though. I thought that would help trigger your memories, but I guess the joke was on me, huh? You didn’t even know I existed at the time.”

“I’m sorry,” Junhui says hollowly, and suddenly, all of the dreams that he has of someone calling his name make sense now. They weren’t dreams— they were memories. “You came all the way to Seoul, and I didn’t even say hi to you.”

_I didn’t take you to eat at all the best places in Seoul. I didn’t take you up Namsan Tower, and I didn’t take you to see the Gyeokbokgung Palace. We should’ve gone shopping in Myeongdong and walked around Itaewon and danced in Hongdae._

“It’s okay. I was right, though,” Minghao murmurs, and Junhui is almost acutely aware that the atmosphere between them has changed again. He reaches forward, and Junhui doesn’t breathe— he _can’t_  breathe— as Minghao brushes his fingers against Junhui’s hair. “It does look good on you. Blond, I mean.”

For a second, they stand there, neither of them moving, before Junhui realizes that he has a job to do.

“Oh, right. You have to go back to your neighborhood and tell them that there’s going to be an explosion in the morning, and then a sinkhole is going to collapse your entire neighborhood,” Junhui rattles off, and if Minghao’s fazed by the information, he doesn’t show it. “This isn’t news to you?”

“Nah.” Minghao bites his lip. “I mean, I woke up after everything was all dark, and I kind of figured that I was. Well. Gone. I didn’t expect to come back here like this. Thank you, though, for giving me a second chance.”

He gives Junhui a tentative smile, one that Junhui returns with eagerness. He can’t even begin to imagine what the past year was like for Minghao— if Minghao had been waiting in darkness for something to happen, or if Minghao had just woken up in the shrine right after the explosions. He doesn’t want to ask. There are lines that have to be drawn, and this is one of them.

“I took a neighbor’s bike and came up here to Qianshan, do you think you’ll be okay going back down on your own?” Junhui asks instead, and Minghao nods. “I already told your mom and your dad about this, so it’s just the other neighbors you have to worry about. Some of them seemed like they were halfway to deciding, but some of them might be a bit harder to convince. I know you can do it, though. You’re you.”

“You have so much faith in me,” Minghao says dryly, but there’s an undercurrent of warmth in his voice. “What’s to say I won’t just bail and leave everyone else so I can at least survive?”

Junhui gives Minghao a long stare. There’s tension written in the way Minghao holds himself, stiff and unsure, like he’s afraid that he won’t be able to save everyone in time. It’s a valid fear to have, and it’s one that Junhui’s selfishly decided to push onto Minghao. He knows, though, if anyone can do it, it’s Minghao. It’s Minghao, with all of his selfless bravery, with all of his unfettered confidence, with all of his incredible warmth and kindness. It’s Minghao.

“Because I know you, Minghao,” Junhui says simply, watching Minghao’s eyes widen, watching a flush rise on Minghao’s ears, “and you’re not that kind of person.”

A thought strikes him, and he pulls a black marker out of his pocket. He motions for Minghao to give him his hand, and Junhui uncaps the marker before leaning down to write on Minghao’s hand. “We should write our names down on each other’s hands, just so we remember, yeah? I’ve been feeling like some of my memories of you and Anshan have started to disappear, so I want to remember this.”

Minghao nods again, and Junhui finishes writing on the inside of Minghao’s palm, closing it before pushing it back to him. He hands Minghao the marker, offering his own palm in exchange. “Here, your turn.”

Minghao presses the marker to Junhui’s palm before he looks up at Junhui again. There’s a storm of emotions in his eyes, and Junhui can’t decipher what he’s thinking. Junhui wants this moment to last forever, wants to imprint this memory of Minghao in his mind, wants to remember the way that the ethereal light around them illuminates Minghao’s eyes and makes them shine. “Junhui, I—”

A bell chimes, and the marker clatters to the ground.

And Junhui’s alone now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :3c 
> 
> (hi all, i have exams this week so i'll be getting to replying to all your comments after that's over TT just one more chapter left!! hopefully i can get the minghao side story out too but we'll see.. what my schedule has planned....... ty for reading~)


	8. your name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> eight years later.

Sometimes, Junhui dreams. He dreams of the view from the top of a lush green mountain, about the taste of fish congee, about the feel of a worn and thin blanket underneath his palms. He wakes up from those dreams with tears streaming down his face, and he doesn’t know why he feels like he’s missing something. It feels like he’s having dreams of a life that isn’t his at all.

There are small gaps in his memories, holes that he can’t fix. He wonders if it has something to do with that time eight years ago. He doesn’t remember too much from that time, and what little he does recall has started to bleed into each other. All of the sights, the sounds, the smells— they’ve blurred together until Junhui can’t tell where one memory ends and the other begins.

He’s heard about what happened eight years ago from his friends and his family, though. Apparently, he decided to go visit Anshan for a day after leaving Shenzhen to see a friend. He came back the day later, slightly disoriented and wobbly, but normal. Even though everyone else he knows seemed to be fine with it, it just didn’t make sense to Junhui at all, and it still doesn’t. He doesn’t even have any friends from Anshan: his only friends are the ones he’d left behind in Shenzhen and the new ones he’s made in Seoul. He’s sure that he would know if he had a friend in Anshan, but he doesn’t.

Still, it used to concern him a lot that he didn’t remember an entire portion of his own memories. He’d asked around to see if anyone else knew where he’d gone or whom he’d been with, but no one knew. Even Wonwoo, Jihoon, and Soonyoung were as lost in the dark as he was. Eventually, he gave up on trying to track down the cause of the memories. He’d been in his third and final year of high school at the time, after all, and he’d needed to focus on his studies and getting into university.

He’s in his third year at a accounting firm now. The pay is decent and the benefits are nice, but lately, his seniors have been getting on his case about finding a relationship. It’s nothing too overt or annoying, but Junhui still bristles whenever a senior gets up close to him, asking, “So, Junhui, when are you planning on settling down with someone nice?” Or “Hey, Junhui, are you planning on bringing anyone to our company dinner next week? You’re allowed a plus one, you know.”

Junhui is content to take his time to meet people until he finds the one who’s right for him. Evidently, he has a type, so he’s not completely hopeless. He always finds himself seeking out people with dyed hair or people with piercings or people with the forms and movements of dancers or better yet, all of the above. But with every relationship that ends in shambles comes the inevitable thought of “what if I never find the one?”

“Junhui, you’re a really, really great person, but I just don’t think this is going to work out anymore,” his last girlfriend had said, her eyebrows furrowing in the middle. “You’re such a fun guy, but sometimes, it seems like you’re somewhere else. Like you’re not really seeing me for me, does that make sense?”

Junhui had stared at her as she brushed a stray lock of dyed brown hair behind her ear, her helix piercings glinting in the afternoon sunlight, and he had swallowed and said, “Yeah, it does.”

Ever since that had happened, he’s been totally single. Not that it bothers him that much on the outside, but if he’s being totally honest with himself, he just wants to know who this mysterious person he’s been dreaming about really is. There has to have been a reason for his entire type, but he doesn’t _know_  any dancers with brown hair and piercings.

Well, there was that one phase Soonyoung had where he dyed his hair brown to try to prove that he looked better with brown hair than Wonwoo does, but Junhui isn’t even going to go there. He’d rather be single than date Soonyoung or Wonwoo, or even Jihoon, for that matter.

Sometimes, he’ll pass by someone on the street or at work, and out of the corner of his eye he’ll see a flash of brown hair or the glint of sunlight off of a piercing. He feels like he’s always been looking for someone, someone who’s just barely out of his reach.

The jolt of the train pulls him out of his thoughts. He’s on his way home from work, and the trains are insanely crowded at this time. Well, Junhui thinks to himself. Better to get jostled around in a train car than to have to suffer in traffic for hours on end.

When he was younger, he’d been dead set on becoming an actor or a dancer. He’d imagined himself playing the lead role in a primetime drama or taking grand leaps and twirls around a stage— just when did he become this kind of person?

Whatever. He’s content where he is now, and as long as he can make enough to make himself and his family comfortable, he doesn’t have any complaints. Junhui adjusts his briefcase and looks up at the windows, sighing. Then he freezes.

There’s a guy staring back at him from the train going the opposite direction, and in that split second when their eyes meet, Junhui realizes, with an almost startlingly sharp clarity, that he has to find the other guy. For some inexplicable reason, the next stop isn’t even his usual stop, since he has four more to go before he gets off at the station closest to his apartment, but he darts out of the train anyway.

Junhui doesn’t even _think_ , he just follows the voice in the back of his head that tells him _go right go left go straight go down these stairs here go right_. He darts through the streets of Seoul, weaving past passersby and ducking into alleyways.

Then, suddenly, he’s standing at the bottom of a flight of stairs and staring up at the guy from before. Junhui flushes, feeling like there isn’t any point to this at all. He’s just run halfway across Seoul for no reason at all, and once adrenaline isn’t pumping through his veins anymore, all that’s left is uncertainty.

Junhui takes a step forward, then two, and he can see out of the corner of his eye that the other guy is doing the same. As the passes the guy on the steps, Junhui swears he can feel a sudden gust of wind, one that whispers something that sounds like a name into his ear, and then he _knows_.

He turns, his blood thundering in his ears and his breath coming out in ragged bursts. “Hey!”

The other guy turns around, looking up at where Junhui is. There’s something eerily familiar about all of his features. The guy doesn’t have brown hair— it’s a dark black now— but he does have piercings, ones that run up and down the shells of his ears, and there’s a bracelet on his wrist, one that shines, luminous and verdant, in the sunlight. Junhui feels like he’s seen it all before.

“You—” Junhui wets his lips, tries again. “Haven’t we met before?”

The other guy’s eyes widen, and he takes a step back up the stairs. “I was just thinking that, too. Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

At the sound of his voice, Junhui’s brought back to the past. He _knows_  this voice, _knows_  this face, _knows_  this person in front of him. He gets sudden impressions of being in a small shrine on top of a mountain, of waiting for the time in between morning and night, of holding the lives of countless in his hands, and of writing _i think i like you_  on someone’s palm.

“Minghao?” It’s a question, but not really, since the guy’s eyes widen even _more_ , and all of Junhui’s suspicions, as fleeting as they were, are confirmed. “You’re— you’re Minghao, right? That’s your name, isn’t it?”

“Junhui,” Minghao breathes out. “Your name is Junhui. I can’t believe you made me wait this long, I’ve been looking for you.”

“You found me,” Junhui says, a laugh bubbling out of his chest, and he steps down the stairs until he and Minghao are standing face to face, finally brought together over time and space. It feels almost impossible, but it’s happening, and it’s _real_. “And I found you, too.”

Minghao grins, his eyes sparkling, and Junhui leans forward to bridge the gap between them.

Somewhere in the distance, a bell chimes.

 

 

 _words like “tomorrow” or “future” or “fate”_  
_no matter how far they extend their hands_  
_we breathe, we dream, we raise our love_  
_in a timeless land far out of reach_  
_even the second, even the hour hands of the clock_  
_they look at us sideways as they tick and tock_  
_how i hope to have forever to spend_  
_this life, no, all future lives_  
_right here in this world with you_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's a wrap, folks! i loved the original source material (watched it six times.... hell yeah) and as soon as my i came out, i knew i wanted to write an au of it. thank you to everyone who's followed so far (sorry i can't get to replying bc i still have exams and projects TT but ilu all), and ty ty ty to yun, who's always there to hold my hand when i start whining about writing ♡
> 
> and happy birthday minghao the most precious spiky fluffball ♡__♡


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